LatinaLista —
Campaign: Can we stop the spread of breast cancer?
Cancer treatment is a challenging, complex and exhausting process for the patient, their family and medical team.
Chemotherapy kills both cancer and normal cells, and may not prevent remaining cancer cells from spreading. The research team of Dr. Monica Montano believe that by turning up a gene HEXIM1, it has a way to stop most cancers from spreading.
It could make cancer treatment more palatable and effective and ultimately make cancer a more survivable disease.
Malignant cancer is such a life threatening disease in part because the original tumor sheds cells which migrate to other tissues in the body, a process called metastasis. Thus cancer cells originating in the breast or prostate can spread to vital organs like the liver, brain or bone.
Chemotherapy currently uses highly toxic chemicals to kill rapidly dividing cancer cells, but often it’s a race against time to find a chemo drug to which the cancer isn’t genetically resistant. Metastatic cells also generally resist other treatments like radiation.
Modern cancer drugs are very sophisticated in being able to target a specific subtype of one variety of cancer. But this complexity makes cancer treatments expensive. Dr. Montano’s drug could be used broadly as an initial frontline and cost-effective therapy.
Dr. Montano’s campaign goal is $4000 and ends in 15 days.
