Disease Background
Propanc focuses on the treatment of late stage metastatic cancer patients. Metastasis refers to the ability of cancer cells to penetrate into lymphatic and blood vessels, circulate through the bloodstream, and then invade normal tissues elsewhere in the body.
Depending on whether or not they can spread by invasion and metastasis, tumors are classified as being either benign or malignant. Benign tumors are tumors that cannot spread by invasion or metastasis; hence, they only grow locally. Malignant tumors are tumors that are capable of spreading by invasion and metastasis. By definition, the term "cancer" applies only to malignant tumors.
A malignant tumor, a "cancer" is a more serious health problem than a benign tumor because cancer cells can spread to distant parts of the body. For example, a melanoma (a cancer of pigmented cells) arising in the skin can have cells that enter the bloodstream and spread to distant organs such as the liver or brain. Cancer cells in the liver would be called metastatic melanoma, not liver cancer. Metastases share the name of the original (“primary”) tumor. Melanoma cells growing in the brain or liver can disrupt the functions of these vital organs and so is potentially life threatening. Metastasis is the most common cause of death from cancer, approximately 90% of deaths.
Malignant versus benign tumors
Source: National Cancer Institute Copyright ©, 2004.
Scientists now understand that the travel of cancer cells from a primary tumor site to a site of potential metastasis depends on a series of complex biological steps. This complex sequence of steps, is sometimes called the "invasion-metastasis cascade".
The great majority (greater than 80%) of life threatening cancers occur in epithelial tissues, yielding carcinomas. In order to acquire motility and invasiveness, carcinoma cells must shed many of their epithelial phenotypes, detach from epithelial sheets, and undergo a drastic alteration – the epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT).
In normal epithelia, an important protein, E-cadherin, plays a crucial role in enabling cells to adhere to one another. When epithelial cells undergo an EMT, the associated loss of E-cadherin expression enables carcinoma cells to become invasive.
Cadherin shifts and melanoma cell invasiveness.
Source: Weinberg R., the biology of CANCER, Garland Science 2007, p605, figure 14.16
Propanc’s scientists inconjunction with its research partners demonstrated for the first time that treatment with proteolytic proenzymes on cancer cell lines increases E-cadherin expression and acquires a less invasive phenotype, thus enabling cancerous cells to move back towards the epithelial direction.
E-cadherin expression is increased in the esophageal and pancreatic cancer cell lines.
Source: Data on file