Hi Anna! There is definitely risk that comes with taking any chemotherapeutic so I wouldn’t say it is necessarily safer. However, I would say that Tetrandine has shown that it could be successful at killing cancer cells which means it, along other chemotherapies, can all be considered traditional chemotherapy.
In your future directions, would it be worthwhile to test the effects of tetrandine on cancer cells as well? For example, could you grow cancer cells on a plate, then irradiate them and add various dilutions of tetrandine to see its effects?
Hi DeeDee! Yes this definitely seems like a future directions experiment that could happen. For this this experiment we would first need to get a very clear range of the minimum and maximum doses of Tetrandine that could kill the cancer cells. This is called a Toxic Dose curve and is used to determine what dose of Tetrandine would be safe to give to patients.
Since you determined that Tetrandine to have an additive effect when combined with radiation treatment, what would the benefit be of testing the compound on a radiation resistant model organism?
Hi Murphy! This experiment would be more to prove that Tetrandine is truly additive. If we saw some effect that the radiation resistant flies were surviving more than with the combination of tentrandine and chemotherapy, we would know there were errors in the first experiments and that they needed to be repeated.
Hi Aidan! Yes we did. For one of our dilution sets the DMSO had a percent survival way under 50% that indicated that a contaminant got into the sample as DMSO should have a percent survival equal to 50%. This whole trial ended up getting taken out because the data was unreliable.
Hi Jillian! So while tetrandine is an additive chemotherapy which means it’s use with radiation isn’t necessary, we still know it is a possible chemotherapeutic and therefore can be beneficial to attacking certain types of cancer. The benefits of this are it is good for us to know as many possible chemotherapeutics as possible. The cons are simply that other drugs should be used synergistically with radiation because Tetrandine works better by itself which does not match our hypothesis.
Do you think Tetrandine is promising as a safer alternative to traditional chemotherapy drugs?
Hi Anna! There is definitely risk that comes with taking any chemotherapeutic so I wouldn’t say it is necessarily safer. However, I would say that Tetrandine has shown that it could be successful at killing cancer cells which means it, along other chemotherapies, can all be considered traditional chemotherapy.
In your future directions, would it be worthwhile to test the effects of tetrandine on cancer cells as well? For example, could you grow cancer cells on a plate, then irradiate them and add various dilutions of tetrandine to see its effects?
Hi DeeDee! Yes this definitely seems like a future directions experiment that could happen. For this this experiment we would first need to get a very clear range of the minimum and maximum doses of Tetrandine that could kill the cancer cells. This is called a Toxic Dose curve and is used to determine what dose of Tetrandine would be safe to give to patients.
Are specific chemotherapies more efficient for different cancers?
Hi Nick! Yes this is correct and that is why so many chemotherapies need to be discovered because they do not all work for the same types of cells.
Since you determined that Tetrandine to have an additive effect when combined with radiation treatment, what would the benefit be of testing the compound on a radiation resistant model organism?
Hi Murphy! This experiment would be more to prove that Tetrandine is truly additive. If we saw some effect that the radiation resistant flies were surviving more than with the combination of tentrandine and chemotherapy, we would know there were errors in the first experiments and that they needed to be repeated.
Did you come across any experimental discrepancies?
Hi Aidan! Yes we did. For one of our dilution sets the DMSO had a percent survival way under 50% that indicated that a contaminant got into the sample as DMSO should have a percent survival equal to 50%. This whole trial ended up getting taken out because the data was unreliable.
You mention that Tetrandine may be used additively to chemo agents. What are the benefits vs cons of this?
Hi Jillian! So while tetrandine is an additive chemotherapy which means it’s use with radiation isn’t necessary, we still know it is a possible chemotherapeutic and therefore can be beneficial to attacking certain types of cancer. The benefits of this are it is good for us to know as many possible chemotherapeutics as possible. The cons are simply that other drugs should be used synergistically with radiation because Tetrandine works better by itself which does not match our hypothesis.