Love and grief can be epic motivators, and perhaps they were the ingredients Dr. David Vesely needed to do the seemingly impossible: cure cancer.
The endocrinologist has been making intriguing cancer research breakthroughs ever since his wife, Clo, died of breast cancer back in 2002. At the urging of his 16-year-old son Brian, who was struggling with his own grief, the good doctor initially turned to research he first conducted back in the late 1980s when he discovered three hormones produced by the heart that prevented normal heart cells from getting bigger and multiplying. He wondered whether these same hormones might have a similar effect on cancer cells.
Together, father and son set up an experiment in which they combined cancer cells and these heart hormones alone in a Petri dish. The result? The hormones nearly destroyed the cancer cells.
“The cells blew apart. So we thought, ‘maybe we did something wrong,’ because you never know,” Vesely told Good Morning America. “But the second time, we knew it was real.”
He has now been working with mice injected with cancer cells and is impressed with the results. He claims that when the mice receive the heart hormones 80 percent of pancreatic cancer cells are eliminated, 86 percent of small lung cancer cells evaporated and 67 percent of breast cancer cells disappeared with almost no side effects.
Exciting news for sure, although the medical community says it’s not quite time to pop the champagne. Dr. Mark Ratain of the University of Chicago said, “I think there is potentially promise here, but I think the real question is whether these very potent hormones will be tolerable at the doses required.
Vesely himself also advises against raising expectations, “because you don’t want to get too far ahead of yourself.”
But still, in the mysterious and deadly world of cancer, any hope of a cure is good news indeed.
Photo courtesy of D-squared via stock.xchang.