I am still stuck in a “busyness” quagmire, but a recent post by an MMA list member caught my attention, so I took some time today to do a bit of research. Here goes. Apparently, many myeloma patients do not respond to Velcade. And those who do eventually relapse. Well, it appears that researchers may have found out why.

A study on Velcade and its effects on myeloma cells was published in “Cancer Research” in February 2009 (see abstract: http://tinyurl.com/czsn2e). Velcade by itself doesn’t kill every single myeloma cell in the body. Indeed, it apparently creates the conditions whereby quite a number of them are able to slip into a state of dormancy, just like ants that go to sleep in order to survive harsh winters in Finland, e.g. When the dormant cells resume their active state, boom!, myeloma rears its ugly head again.

But it seems that when salubrinal, a “selective inhibitor of enzymes that dephosphorylate EIF 2-alpha” (don’t ask!),  is added to Velcade, there are very few survivors. In other words, these two drugs together are able to wipe out almost all the ants in Fin…I mean, almost the entire population of dormant myeloma cells.

When I was about 2/3 of the way through the abstract, the following thought popped into my head: why not try to figure out how we can use this bit of information to kill our dormant myeloma cells via natural treatments, or at least keep them in a state of dormancy? Or…is that what we are doing right now with curcumin etc.? I began to look into this very matter earlier today but soon realized that I need a bigger chunk of free time to do a semi-decent job. Ant…I mean, and I need the full study. More to come…