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Biology in the News is presented by Dr. Lamar's Biology A/B classes. Each student is responsible for posting ONE blog entry and commenting on ONE post submitted by a fellow student.

About your initial posting . . . . . (approximately 150- 300 words)

Your initial posting is worth 30 points. It must be submitted by October 15th. - Locate an electronic article about a new finding in biology. Article must be been written in the last 12 months. Your posting should include 1) the name of the article (3 point), 2) article source - be specific (3 point), 3) date of article (2 point), 4) link to article (2 points), 5) summary of article in your own words (0-10 points), and 6) significance of article (0-10 points). Comments on significance of article can include (but not be limited to) importance of article to self, to society, or to the further advancement of a particular area of biology.

NOTE: To add link, select text in post that you want to link, click on link icon above posting field, and then paste URL information into appropriate field.

About your comments to a fellow classmate's posting . . . . (approximately 100 - 200 words)

Your comments to another student's posting is worth 20 points. Comments must be submitted between October 16 and November 19 - "The more you know, the more you realize there's a lot more to know" is certainly true to science. Read our Biology in the News blob posts. Pick one post (not your own) and submit comments about this post. Comments should included 1) A question that is raised in your mind by the post. The question should have scientific relevance (0 - 5 points) 2) a response to your question. (0-15 points) Research your question and answer it. If the answer is currently unknown, provide additional background information, describe research that is being done in this field, and/or research that is required for the question to be answered.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Inner Workings of Potent Cancer Drug Derived from Evergreen Tree

Source-ScienceDaily
Article date- Oct. 14, 2010
Link to website-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101014134633.htm

Summary

Scientists from both UC Santa Barbara, and a pharmaceutical company have been working together to develop a drug that kills cancer. Starting out in Isolated test tube cases they have successfully killed cancer cells with there new drug. Although the drug is not yet approved by the FDA there have been successful human trials. The drug in the clinical trail phase and has killed one third of the patients with breast cancer and showed a decrease in tumor size. Although at first this drug was dangerous because it targeted more than just cancer cells. The drug works by affecting a cells ability to do mitosis. This problem was fixed by adding an antibody which causes the drug to only attack the cancer cells. The synthetic drug comes from a molecule in an evergreen tree from the genera Maytenus, and this type of plant grows in several continents. When asked about the fight against cancer one of the scientist mentioned that scientist are finally making small steps towards beating many forms of cancer and that the best part is that they are showing results in clinical trails and are helping many people to live.

What I Think:
I think this has a huge role in the world of biology. If we can find a way to kill cancer cells with a simple drug we can save people a lot of money and even more important we can save peoples lives. Cancer seems like it has touched everybody because either you know someone who has suffered with cancer or you at least know someone who knows someone who has dealt with it. Cancer is a terrible thing and costs us the lives of thousands including children who may never get to grow older because of it. I feel like cancer should be our worlds biggest concern and any break through is us becoming one step closer to getting rid of cancer for good.
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1 comment:

  1. Karly ThompsonNovember 21, 2010 at 11:03 AM

    Comments: I found this article extremely interesting, it is awesome to know that something as small as a molecule in an evergreen tree can possibly help cure patients with breast cancer. I hope that there can be further studies done to help improve the drug so that the FDA will approve it, so it can be used to help suffering patients as soon as possible

    Question: What specifically does the drug do to effectively stop mitosis?

    Answer: The chromosomes are not able to arrange in normal symmetrical functional spindles because of the dynamics of the microtubules that are inhibited by the drug, the drug-treated cells cannot divide and ultimately die which is how mitosis is disrupted.

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