By EBELE ORAKPO

…acts on hard-to-diagnose, resistant form of leukaemia
Pamela Ovadje is a doctorate student in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Windsor, Canada. She shot into limelight when she and her colleagues discovered the cancer-killing properties of Dandelion weeds (Taraxacum officinale.) She is following in her father’s footsteps.

Pamela is the second daughter of Dr. Otu Oviemo Ovadje,  a medical doctor and a retired Brigadier-General from the Nigerian Army. Dr. Ovadje is well known for inventing the Emergency Auto Transfusion Set (EAT Set) used for facilitating the recovery of blood out of the body cavity during operations and re-infusing it back into the patient’s body after filtration. This way, transmission of diseases is prevented and immunological complications avoided. Excerpts:

Cancer has for long been a thorn in the flesh of scientists seeking ways to cure the deadly disease. The mere mention of cancer sends shivers down the spines of people but all that is about to change, thanks to the work of Pamela Ovadje and her colleagues. The discovery is believed to hold great potential for the treatment of some cancers including leukemia (cancer of the blood), melanoma, pancreatic, and colon cancers.

Pamela Ovadje and colleagues at work

Pamela says that their goal was to find a cancer treatment option that is selective and targets only cancerous cells.

The project entitled Efficient induction of extrinsic cell death by dandelion root extract in human Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML) cells,was carried out by Pamela and her colleagues – Sudipa Chatterjee, Carly Griffin and Cynthia Tragrants – under the supervision of Dr. Siyaram Pandey, a biochemist at the institution. The group set out to study the anticancer effects of dandelion root extract (DRE), by evaluating its ability to induce physiological programs of cell death in aggressive, resistant Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia (CMML) cells.

Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia is a very aggressive and resistant form of leukemia that starts in blood-forming cells of the bone marrow and invades the blood. It is not only hard to diagnose and classify, but also highly resistant to treatment and so kills most of its victims within 24 months after diagnosis, according to reports.

Dandelion, a perennial weed found almost anywhere in the world.

DRE induces apoptosis in CMML cells
The researchers dug up dandelion roots, got the extract from the root and applied it to leukemia cells. It was discovered that dandelion root extract (DRE) is effective in killing leukemia cells without affecting normal cells. Said Pamela; “The problem with currently available treatments like chemotherapy, is that they are not very selective so they tend to target non-cancerous cells as well unlike DRE which targets only cancerous cells.”

“The leukemia cells effectively commit suicide within 24 hours of getting the dandelion treatment. It killed the cells very selectively. It only killed the cancer cells. The regular cells were not killed,” said Pandey.

Explaining how DRE works, the researchers noted that DRE “efficiently and selectively induces apoptosis (programmed cell death) and autophagy (self-digestion by a cell through the action of enzymes originating within the same cell) in these cell lines in a dose and time-dependent manner, with no significant toxicity on non-cancerous peripheral blood mononuclear cells.”

In other words, dandelion root extract acts on CMML cells, causing them to self-destruct without affecting surrounding healthy cells unlike what happens with other forms of cancer treatment like chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The researchers hope this may be a stepping stone for the development of a more efficient therapy for Chatterjee and Ovadje won awards for presentations of their research at the Third Annual Cancer Drug Discovery Symposium in Sudbury.