肝癌 z-bo 2020-10-17 353

　　In the struggle between humans and diseases, the latter usually dominates. For terminal patients, the pace of biomedical research is very slow. It takes years or even decades to understand how the disease is spread in the body and develop drugs to treat the disease. time. Before it is approved for human clinical trials, it will take several years to test the drug in laboratories and animal experiments. Before the drug was developed, millions of people died of HIV/AIDS.

　　Therefore, if research progress can bring more immediate relief to patients, it will be very exciting. Recently, Arinogers, associate professor of pathology at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, made such a breakthrough in liver cancer research. They found that prolactin is a hormone that helps breastfeeding mothers produce milk and helps prevent lactation. This disease. Liver cancer is relatively rare in the United States, but lung, breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer are the most commonly diagnosed cancers. However, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) data, liver cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death after lung cancer. The disease is particularly common in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where liver cancer is related to hepatitis B and C viruses and toxins in food and water supplies. In the United States, the number of liver cancer patients is also increasing, especially among those who received blood transfusions before hepatitis C was detected in the 1970s and 1980s and their donors were regularly checked. You may get cancer. Rogers said: "Many hemophilia patients die of hepatitis C. Currently, these patients have chronic liver disease and may develop cirrhosis and cancer. Obesity and type 2 diabetes. Patients may also develop chronic liver disease, which will increase. Risk of cancer."

　　Experimental Pathology Dr. Rogers studied liver cancer when he was a researcher at MIT. I started. At that time, a strange phenomenon attracted him. In all mouse liver cancer studies, the researchers used only male mice. Rogers said: "This is because the prevalence of male mice is so high that it is cheap to use only male animals. No one seems to be so interested in understanding why."

　　pituitary gland prescription

　　In humans, liver cancer is more common in men. According to data from the World Health Organization, according to different countries, the number of men suffering from the disease is 2 to 8 times that of women. Diseases that affect male imbalance (such as cardiovascular disease) are common chronic inflammatory diseases. In this case, the body's immune response can fill the tissue with blood cells and chemicals. Rogers believes that liver cancer also applies.

　　But, what will affect the difference in the degree of inflammation between men and women? The obvious answer seems to be sex hormones, such as testosterone and estrogen. However, when Rogers reviewed the scientific literature, in a humble essay in the 1940s, he discovered that the root may lie in a different part of the human body: the pituitary gland, which releases growth hormone and prolactin. done. in

　　In the

　　 lab, Rogers and colleagues exposed liver cells to pituitary hormones. Growth hormone has almost no effect, but prolactin can significantly inhibit certain inflammatory reactions. Based on this surprising finding, Rogers speculated that prolactin may play a role in protecting women from liver cancer. "I think it's too simple to focus on estrogen and testosterone. It has nothing to do with sex hormones, it has nothing to do with the pituitary gland."

　　To test this hypothesis, Rogers tested a series of mouse experiments involving the use of male and female mice that cannot produce prolactin. Female mice that do not carry the prolactin gene have a high risk of cancer, 75%, but only 10% of normal female mice that contain prolactin have cancer. It is not clear, but whether it is effective in male mice. Male mice with prolactin have the same cancer incidence as male mice without prolactin, but only show about one-third of the tumors. He said: "I thought it would be effective on female animals, but I didn't expect it to respond to male mice. Prolactin can even help them."

　　This discovery is that human patients hope that the US Food and Drug Administration will approve several drugs that can artificially increase prolactin levels. These drugs are most commonly used for mental and gastrointestinal disorders, and can be used to stimulate lactation in primiparas with lactation problems. Rogers tested the drug in mice exposed to chemicals that can induce liver cancer. He found that only 22% of the tumors in the male mice taking the drug shrank, while only 100% of the tumors in the mice that did not take the drug shrank. Rogers published the latest research related to "PNAS" magazine. He hopes that this research will one day be useful not only for patients in the United States, but also for people in developing countries. According to a survey by the World Cancer Foundation, approximately 83% of liver cancer cases occur in developing countries.

　　He said: "If the targets we found in mice can also work for humans, then we can ship drugs to Asia and Africa in the future. These drugs already exist and have been approved. There are obstacles. At present, Rogers is strong. We are working on it. Work with statisticians at the medical school to determine whether patients taking these drugs for other diseases have a lower chance of developing liver cancer

　　Use prolactin inducers as therapeutic drugs Rogers said that if the drug is successfully used in clinical trials, it may take years instead of the usual decades before it can be used as a prescription drug for high-risk groups. He said: "I don't think it can cure liver cancer, but it can help prevent liver cancer. Historically, the best way to reduce the burden of cancer is to prevent the development of liver cancer."