Unconventional Powerful Cancer-related Drug Candidate

Cancer is one of the most life-threatening diseases around the world with increasing number of people suffering from cancer. Its number keep increasing rapidly pass over this decade and expected to increase in next decade. Recent study by WHO (World Health Organization) shown that the number of global cancer death is projected to increase 45% from 2007 to 2030 (from 7.9 million to 11.5 million deaths). Cancer is so malignant that most of people will do anything to kill cancer with intervention, surgery and chemotherapy. Chemotherapy has become the last option available to those who suffer cancer after having done intervention or surgical treatment. However, drug used to this therapy cause some negative side-effect to the patient. Until this bad impact of drug-related cancer can be substituted by the harmless one, scientist, doctors and pharmacist keep on researching the best possible drug to cure cancer.

The development of cancer-related drug have shown a great improvement over this decade. It’s started with the first discovery of arsenic dioxide as the chemotherapy agent and followed by the more harmless drug such as thalidomide and bendamustine. Now, the development of cancer-related drug has moved to a new perspective of healing with genome based medicine. Thanks to the discovery of the latest promising genomic cancer-related drug in 2010 by Jay Bradner and team. This research which is funded by Dana Farber Institute in joint with Harvard Medical School find a certain substance targeting genome triggering cancer. This substance is called JQ1, a cell-permeable small molecule that binds competitively to acetyl-lysine recognition motifs, or bromodomains. Bromodomain-containing proteins are of substantial biological interest, as components of transcription factor complexes and determinants of epigenetic memory which may turn the transcription of normal cells into cancerous.

This JQ1 molecule targets a specific bromodomain called BRD4 by displaces it from nuclear chromatin in cells in order to avoid getting transcripted and causing cancerous cells. Moreover, cancerous cells targeted by JQ1 was forgetting that it was cancer and becoming normal cells.

Clinical trial in mice has shown a massive dramatic changes. Mice infused by cancerous cell developed a large mass of tumour in its thigh. Treatment from this compound made the rapid growth of cancerous cell faded. With complete clinical trial in 4 mouse models, the mice that get the drug lived and ones that don’t get the drug rapidly perished. It is also shown that mouse models that the drug has a longer life than those which don’t. In addition, those mouse models not getting the drug grew a rapid mass of tumour while the ones getting the drug didn’t.

Another recent study has shown that JQ1 compound make the leukimia cell revert back to normal as well as happened in myeloma and fatty liver which revert to their normal condition. Eventhough this substance has not yet to be claimed undergone in human experiment, it has become a magnet towards other researchers."We're also excited to have found a pharmacological way to suppress Myc, which plays a role in many oncogenic pathways and is deregulated in most cancers," says Scott Lowe, Scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) . It is expected that the derivative compound of JQ1 will be discovered and create a stronger cancer-related drug in the future.

JQ1 is expected to be a powerful cancer drug in the near future. There are magnificent empiric prove shown by laboratorium and clinical trial, such as revert cancerous cells to normal and lengthen the life expectancy by making the rapid growth of tumur faded, which support it to be one of the biggest discovery in medicine.

Bibliography

1.       Bardner, James, “Selective Inhibition of BET Bromodomain”,  Dana Farber-Cancer Institute.

2.       Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, “Unconventional hunt for new cancer targets leads to a powerful drug candidate for leukemia”, Medical press.

3.       Bardner, James. “TEDxBoston: Open-source Cancer Research”. Video taken from youtube at October 31^th 2011 at 9.15 p.m.

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Animanga's Values of Life

Indonesia people usually watch anime when they were children, but Japanese watch anime regardless their age. Instead of being entertained or pleasure, people may get a lot of values in the anime itself.

Skeptic views said that watching anime is a wasting time activities. They think like that, because they don’t regard anime as a source of values teaching in the modern life. They think that it will poison children mind, and stray their own future. But, we ought to see a different perspective about the anime. Anime contains a lot of living values that we need to learn in our world.

Anime offer us values of living in the world. There are courage, friendship, empathy. The values of courage usually is given by shonen animes (watch animanga genre) . We may see courageous action of a character in order to beat the boss, they teach us how to be a greater person through a lot of training, experience, and will.  In our life, we may implant that action towards our life with having a strong willed mind to achieve our goals, having a courageous action to initiate our dreams, rising up from heavy nightmare and having endured our pain when we are learning something new. We may learns this value in One Piece, Naruto, etc

The value of friendship is offered in a dense proportion in the anime. We often see a character defend their friend, save his friends from danger, even sacrifice himself in order not to get their friends hurt. This teach us a lot about friendship that we should be there when our friend need our help, we should not be egoistic (makan temen), and so on so forth. Bleach, Ao No Exorcist have a dense friendship values

Empathy is the ability to understand another person's feelings, experience, etc (Oxford Advanced Dictionary). It is in the anime. Anime contains a touching scene, a different perspective that we may feel. It often tell us to understand others feeling, not to being cruel, and even give us an understanding how miserable a war is. This will give you a lot of an understanding about others feeling, different perspective, and conflict avoiding. We can sharpen our empathy in watching Gundam 00, Ao No Exorcist, One Piece.

So, in the end, anime has its own good values to teach us, and we’re supposed to see that anime will not only bring harm but also great life values we need.

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Gain Focus and Act Smarter when Sadness Come

Feelings of sadness can trigger stress or even depression. But sadness is also benefit because grief can make people think more focus and act smarter.

Professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia has found that sad people tend to be more dubious about the myths and rumors. They also tend to see people as individuals, not as stereotypes. They even provide a more convincing presentation."When happy, someone close their eyes from reality and just think about falling in love. The grief will make people think more deeply, concentrating on new information, look to the outside world and reassess old ideas," said Gordon Parker, professor of psychiatry at the University of New South Wales was quoted as saying by The Telegraph, Wednesday (19/10/2011).A U.S. study of 8,000 people found that a quarter of people treated for depression was not really sick. They have just experienced emotional difficulties such as loss, which they then solve itself naturally.Grief makes people calm, to reassess and make changes. If people are sad feel the need to take a sedative, in fact he does not need it. Because research shows that placebos have the same effect.A clinical trial comparing drug with placebo antidepressant. In this experiment, a placebo was found often able to cure depression.In 96 studies on antidepressants from 1980 to 2005, the placebo effect tenyata twice the effective anti-depressant and for six of 10 patients.The placebo effect works because one believes that the drug works and it works like the original antidepressants to treat depression that most of them can heal itself."Sadness helps us learn from our mistakes. I think, one of the functions of negative emotions is to make us focus on something else for a while," said psychiatrist Professor Jerome Wakefield of New York University.Sadness can also prevent people from making mistakes in the first place. The risk of sadness may deter people from becoming too sloppy or cavalier, especially in a relationship or with other matters that are considered valuable.

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