New Cure For Skin Cancer

SDSU researchers lead by Chandradhar Dwivedi, Head, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, SDSU have found that treating human skin cancer cells with various concentrations of sarcophine-diol has inhibited the proliferation of cancer cells in each case.

The research team worked on sarcophine-diol’s potential to slow down growth of cancer cells, and also on its ability to induce orderly and programmed death of skin cancer cells called apoptosis – as quoted in sciencedaily.com.

The SDSU team also looked at whether the substance works in DNA fragmentation (considered a biochemical hallmark of apoptosis) — an indication that the cell is committed to die. At lower concentrations, it did not significantly induce, but higher levels of sarcophine-diol induced higher level of so-called “executioner” proteins that have a role in apoptosis.

However, sarcophine-diol did not prove to be effective in case of necrosis, or the premature death of healthy cells.

Mr. Dwivedi said: “Sarcophine-diol could be used both for chemoprevention and as a chemotherapeutic agent and can be further investigated for use against non-melanoma skin cancer development. Further investigations of sarcophine-diol in experimental models and in cell culture studies are needed to explore its mechanisms of action.”