Materia Medica Malaysiana

UPM takes a step forward for cancer research

A LOCAL university seems poised to take cancer research to a higher level.

Universiti Putra Malaysia's (UPM) lecturer Dr Johnson Stanslas, together with students from the university's department of biomedical sciences, is spearheading this work.

“The group's research focuses on the discovery and development of novel anti-cancer therapeutics from nature,” said Dr Stanslas about the work of the Cancer Research and Drug Discovery (CRDD) group.

“As I am based in the faculty of medicine and health sciences, a big chunk of my research focuses on the pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo evaluations of potential anti-cancer agents,” he said at the signing of a research and consultancy agreement between UPM and Autoimmune Sdn Bhd.

Under the agreement, Autoimmune Sdn Bhd's managing director, Patriek Yeoh, said UPM would evaluate some of Autoimmune's botanical-based formulations to produce scientific data which supports medical efficacy.

“This means UPM will be evaluating the in vitro (artificial environment) anti-cancer potential of Autoimmune's plant extracts and the in vivo potential of the company's purely herbal-based product known as Hepat for the treatment of liver toxicity,” he explained.

Yeoh explained that the evaluation is expected to take a year to complete, with scientific findings reported every three months.

“This is a significant step forward in increasing scientific documentation of herbal-based medicine, and would help to raise the overall safety and efficacy standards of such medicine,” he said.

“Other than evaluating single chemical entities as anti-cancer agents, we have also started evaluating herbal preparations for the treatment of cancer.

“We follow the guidelines set by the national committee for research and development in herbal medicine based at the Institute of Medical Research, and strictly conform to the regulations laid out by the National Pharmaceutical Control Bureau to ensure that our herbal products achieve the expected therapeutic effects,” said Dr Stanslas.

He added that the CRDD aimed to identify local natural resources that could provide leads to the treatment of cancer, promote drug discovery in Malaysia, establish international collaborations, and establish UPM as a centre of excellence in cancer research.

“The vision of CRDD is to facilitate the establishment of a national level cancer institute which can spearhead pre-clinical and clinical research on cancer.

“To achieve this, we need a lot of support from the university and the government,” he added.