Modern Cancer therapy Search for Immunomodulators

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Modern Cancer therapy Search for Immunomodulators

• Sham Diwanay
• Dept. of Microbiology, Abasaheb Garware College,
  Pune
• Dr. Bhushan Patwardhan
• Director, School of Health Sciences, University
  of Pune, Pune

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• Cancer chemotherapy targets rapidly dividing
  cancer cells but produces substantial acute and
  chronic toxicity, affecting rapidly dividing
  normal body cells, mostly marrow cells thus
  limiting the effectiveness of treatment.
• Chemoprotectant are used to improve the
  therapeutic ratio by selectively reducing
  toxicity of cancer chemotherapeutic agent, in
  non-tumor bearing tissues.

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• Effect of chemical chemoprotectants if often
  locoregional and is dependent on dose and time of
  administration in context to anticancer drugs.
• An ideal drug itself will have anticancer
  activity and at the same time provide protection,
  if used in combination with conventional chemo-,
  radio- therapy.
• An additional criterion for such drug will be
  modulation of immune system for normalization of
  physiological functions.

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Immunomodulation

• Concept and Definition Immunomodulators are
  Biological Response Modifiers (BRM), used to
  treat cancer, exert their anti-tumor effects by
  improving host defense mechanisms against tumor
  (Encyclopedia Britannica).
• Immunostimulation in drug-induced
  immunosuppression and immunosuppression in
  experimental hyper-reactivity model by the same
  preparation can be said to be true
  immunomodulation.

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Ashwagandha Gulwel
Shatavari
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Immunomodulation in animal tumor model

• A simple convenient ascitic sarcoma tumor was
  developed to screen plant derived drugs for their
  immunomodulatory activity.
• Anticancer drug treatment of ascitic sarcoma
  bearing mice resulted in tumor regression and
  also myelo-, immuno- suppression.
• Simple hematological and serological parameters
  were used to evaluate plant derived drug activity.

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• Treatment with few selected test preparations
  resulted in
• Immunostimulatory activity in tumor-free animals
  receiving or not receiving anticancer drugs.
• Protection from toxic side effects viz. myelo,
  immuno- suppression without compromising or
  interference with anticancer activity and this
  activity was dose dependent.
• Treatment with these candidate drugs will be
  important in development of supportive / adjuvant
  treatment to cancer therapy to avoid untoward
  effects.