UJ discovers silver-based, anti-cancer drug that is cheaper and less toxic
The University of Johannesburg (UJ) said on Tuesday that "a new family of very promising silver-based anti-cancer drugs" has been discovered by researchers. The university said the most promising silver thiocyanate phosphine complex among those researched‚ known as UJ3‚ has been successfully tested in rats and on human cancer cells in the laboratory. In research published in BioMetals‚ the university states that UJ3 is shown to be as effective against human esophageal cancer cells as a widely used chemotherapy drug in use today. Esophageal cancer cells are known to become resistant to current forms of chemotherapy. "The UJ3 complex is as effective as the industry-standard drug cisplatin in killing cancer cells in laboratory tests done on human breast cancer and melanoma‚ a very dangerous form of skin cancer‚" Prof Marianne Cronjé‚ head of the department of biochemistry at UJ‚ said in a statement. "However‚ UJ3 requires a 10-times lower dose to kill cancer cells. It also focuses more...
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