Cancer, Cancer Treatment

Medicinal plants have been used as traditional remedies for hundreds of years.

Among them, S. barbata has been traditionally used in treatment of hepatitis, inflammation, osteomyelitis and gynecological diseases in China. Studies indicate that extracts from S. barbata have growth inhibitory effects on a number of human cancers. Reports are available on the treatment of lung, breast and digestive system cancer, hepatoma, and chorioepithelioma with S. barbata extracts. However, the underlying mechanism of the antitumor activity of S. barbata extracts remains unclear.

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 22 — Researchers have identified 26 genes associated with the most common type of lung cancer, adenocarcinoma — more than doubling the number of genes known to play a role in the deadly disease.

The discovery could help in developing individualized ways of diagnosing and treating lung cancer, the top cancer killer, the researchers said.

“Although similar, smaller cancer gene sequencing projects have been reported, our study is the largest to date and provides the statistical power to detect significantly mutated genes,” study co-author Richard Wilson, director of Washington University’s Genome Sequencing Center in St. Louis, said during a Tuesday teleconference.

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