From cow's milk, an anti-tumor protein

It is called Lactoferricin B25 (LFcinB25), and it is not a code name for military hardware but a peptide, a very small molecule made up of a chain of amino acids with recognized antimicrobial properties.

Dr. Wei-Jung Chen, of the Department of Biotechnology and Animal Science at National Ilan University in Taiwan, has studied it at length to uncover what could prove to be a landmark step in the treatment of stomach cancer.

To date, the treatment of gastric carcinoma is based mainly on surgery and chemotherapy, which guarantee good results only in cases of early diagnosis.
What Dr. Chen and his team discovered in the laboratory, by analyzing the effects of 3 peptide fragments derived from LFcinB25, was that LFcinB25 exposed to tumor cells had "migrated to the cell membrane of cells affected by gastric adenocarcinoma" and that within 24 hours the tumor cells had shrunk and lost part of their ability to adhere to surfaces.

The action of this molecule, in essence, therefore seems to consist in promoting programmed cell death and the natural degradation of damaged cells.
Working on the development of drugs based on these initial discoveries will be the next step.


Source Article