STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Cancer is becoming a big load on families/ economies and responsible for 4-5 per cent deaths worldwide annually. India as a single country contributing about 7.8 per cent of global cancer burden and now the cancer disease has constantly been spreading its tentacles in the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir during the past several years with lung cancer becoming most prominent due to smoking.
This was informed by Dr. Vikas Sharma while speaking in Golden Jubilee International Conference on “Emerging Trends in Plant Protection”, held from August 25-26, 2021 by hybrid mode at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Tamil Nadu.
Dr. Vikas Sharma made back to back two power point presentations of his research papers entitled “In vitro cytotoxic effect of Apricot against human cancer cell lines” and “L-Asparaginase anticancer efficacy” in the aforesaid International Conference where he stressed that cancer research has become a major area of scientific research supporting the foundations of modern biology to a great extent because the devastation caused by cancer is staggering to contemplate and it is considered that the management of cancer is still not up to the mark.
Dr Vikas through presentation of his research findings discussed that Prunus armeniaca commonly known as apricot was collected from Kargil district of Union territory of Ladakh and the kernel part of apricot was evaluated with systematic bioassays along with standard drugs of cancer against eleven human cancer cell lines and it was found that kernel of apricot showed anticancer potential against breast cancer cells.
In his second presentation Dr. Sharma discussed that L-asparaginase enzyme was isolated from Black gram rhizospheric soil sample of Rajouri district of J&K and further purified to evaluate against cancer cell lines and the purified protein showed anticancer efficacy against breast cancer cells.
Dr. Sharma further informed that we are in emergent need of anticancer drugs that are less toxic, endowed with fewer side effects and more potent in mechanism of action.