Tulsi enters
US lab to fight cancer
Washington:
The ubiquitous tulsi in your backyard may be a potent weapon against all kinds
of cancer, so believes a team of researchers led by an Indian-origin scientist.
Tulsi
or basil has eugenol that helps fight cancer. Now the research team is
genetically modifying tulsi in the lab to produce the anti-cancerous compound
in abundance.
“When
you grind basil leaves, a compound called eugenol comes out. If I could make it
produce eugenol in higher amounts, that basil plant would serve as a storehouse
of that anti-cancerous compound,” said Chandrakanth Emani, assistant professor
of plant molecular biology at Western Kentucky University-Owensboro (WKU-O) in
the US.
In
his lab at the Owensboro facility, Emani and his students are genetically
engineering the basil to produce more eugenol, a compound in basil that, in his
words, “has a very great pharmaceutical value because it’s shown to control
breast cancer”.
“Eugenol,
when they put it on a plate where there are tumour cells, it stopped growth of
the tumour cells. That was a proof of concept experiment which was done a long
time back,” said Emani, in a press release issued by the university.
The
next phase in the research project would be to test the compound as an
effective cancer treatment.
“We
want to deal with treating cancer in a holistic way. We want to find one
treatment that takes care of many cancers,” Emani added.
Tulsi's
therapeutic properties have been discussed at great length in ancient ayurveda
texts in India.
Emani,
who earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in India, has been at
WKU-Owensboro since 2010.
20.01.2014
Peshawar is world's
'largest reservoir' of polio: WHO
Islamabad:
With over 90 per cent of Pakistan's polio cases genetically linked to Peshawar,
the World Health Organisation today described the northwestern city as the
world's "largest reservoir" of endemic poliovirus.
According
to the latest genomic sequencing results of the Regional Reference Laboratory
for polio, 83 of 91 polio cases in Pakistan in 2013 were genetically linked to
the virus circulating in Peshawar. Moreover, 12 of the 13 cases reported from
Afghanistan last year were directly linked to Peshawar.
"With
more than 90 percent of the current polio cases in the country genetically
linked to Peshawar, the (city) is now the largest reservoir of endemic
poliovirus in the world," WHO said in a statement.
"As
much of the population of the (tribal areas) moves through Peshawar, the city
acts as an amplifier of the poliovirus," it said.
Pakistan
was the only polio-endemic country where cases of the crippling disease
increased last year. Nigeria and Afghanistan are the only other countries where
polio is endemic.
During
the last four years, samples of sewage water from across Pakistan were tested
for the presence of polio virus.
A
total of 86 samples were collected from different locations of Peshawar in this
period, and 72 samples showed the presence of highly contagious and paralytic
wild polio virus strain.
All
samples of sewage water collected during the past six months from parts of
Peshawar showed the presence of the highly contagious virus.
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
province, of which Peshawar is the capital, and adjoining tribal districts are
polio hotspots. An explosive polio outbreak in the tribal areas, which left 65
children paralysed last year, was sustained by Peshawar.
WHO
recommended that repeated, high-quality vaccination campaigns and strong
monitoring should be organised in Peshawar to stop polio transmission and
protect children.
The
anti-polio campaign hit a wall in June 2012, when the Pakistani Taliban banned
vaccinations in parts of the lawless tribal belt, saying the restriction would
last till US drone strikes cease.
Militants
and gunmen frequently attack vaccination teams, accusing them of being Western
spies and part of a plot to "sterilise" Muslims.
Pakistan
registered 85 new polio cases last year.
20.01.2014
Accepting your
mistakes is the only way to make them disappear
Senora
Roy
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