Scientists from Kragujevac developing cancer medication which doesn’t damage healthy tissue

Scientists from the Faculty of Medical Sciences in Kragujevac, in cooperation with their colleagues from the Faculty of Sciences in Kragujevac, have developed cancer medication which doesn’t damage healthy tissue.

The medicine has been researched and applied on small laboratory animals, and the results show that the new platinum-based anti-tumor medication has fewer unwanted effects than the conventional cytostatic drugs.

– We live in an era of an epidemic of malignant diseases which are threatening to become the biggest health problem. Conventional therapy doesn’t produce satisfactory results and one of the goals of our center is to try to find new and better therapy for malignant diseases. In cooperation with our chemist colleagues from our faculty and the Faculty of Sciences, we are developing new complexes of heavy metals, testing their stability and structure, and then, in further research, we are testing their potential to kill the malignant cells. We are also doing so-called in vitro and in vivo tests on malignant cells and on small laboratory animals in which we induce tumors and then test the efficiency of that medicine – professor Ivan Ivanovic of the Faculty of Medicine in Kragujevac said for N1.

As part of the research, medicines for four types of cancer are being tested.

– Many of the complexes we are examining are producing fantastic results. They are very efficient and they are also showing some other advantages – says professor Ivanovic.

– A significant multidisciplinary team is behind these important results. Our aim was to create the future of chemo-therapy medicines which are just as aggressive as the conventional cytostatic therapy or even more so, so that they have fewer unwanted effects, while being more comfortable to the patient. At the same time, they are supposed to help clinicians in the pre-operation period when either the stadium of the disease or the size of the tumor needs to be reduced, and on the other hand, in the post-operation period too, so as to prevent a relapse or metastasis of the malignant disease. These new cytostatic drugs are based on cisplatin as the first representative of platinum derivatives. And all these new derivatives that we have synthesized and tested have shown the same, if not better, results when it comes to breast cancer and colorectal cancer, and on the other hand, they have far lower toxic effects on the healthy cells, and later on, on the animal models, they showed far lower toxic effects on the kidneys, the liver, the lungs – said professor Bojan Stojanovic, a general surgeon at the Clinical Center in Kragujevac.

The medication has shown great effects on the animals, the professors from Kragujevac say and add that the pre-clinical part has been tested very well. What is missing is a continuation of the testing on the human population in order for all these effects to be confirmed, and the scientists from Kragujevac now need support from pharmaceutical houses in order to continue their research.

Fakultet medicinskih nauka u Kragujevcu

Prirodno matematički fakultet Kragujevac

Faculty of Medical Sciences in Kragujevac

Faculty of Sciences in Kragujevac

Ivan Ivanović

Bojan Stojanović

cancer medication

cytostatic