Cancer research triumph for two WCM-Q students

Manaal Siddiqui (left) with Basma Abdellatif and Dr Dietrich Busselberg.

Two student researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) have had their paper on the capacity of naturally occurring plant compounds to alleviate nerve damage and pain caused by anti-cancer drugs published in a prestigious scientific journal. Students Manaal Siddiqui and Basma Abdellatif were second-year premedical students at WCM-Q when they began the research project to examine the capacity of flavonoids, which are found naturally in fruits, vegetables, flowers and barks, to alleviate chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN). Guided by their research mentor at WCM-Q, Dr Dietrich Busselberg, professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Manaal and Basma conducted a painstaking systematic review of a vast quantity of existing research into the effects of flavonoids on CIPN. They then synthesised and presented the data alongside detailed descriptions of the intricate chemical mechanisms by which chemotherapy drugs cause pain and peripheral nerve damage and how flavonoids can inhibit these mechanisms. Now in their first year of the medical programme at WCM-Q, the students were delighted when their paper, titled 'Flavonoids Alleviate Peripheral Neuropathy Induced by Anticancer Drugs', was published in 'Cancers', a leading journal. The mechanisms by which chemotherapy drugs cause nerve damage are varied and include proinflammatory cytokine release (inflammation), oxidative stress (an imbalance between harmful free radicals and beneficial antioxidants), ion channel activation (a disturbance in the way molecules move in and out of cells), and damage to the mitochondria, which generate chemical energy to power the cell’s biochemical reactions.