Research Interest:
Development of tumors is a highly complex process in which several molecular events are required for tumor cells to achieve independent growth. One such event is the enhancement of angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is the formation and growth of new blood vessels. It occurs in the healthy body for healing wounds and for restoring blood flow to tissues after injury or insult. Therefore angiogenesis is a necessary component of normal tissue repair, tumor growth and a wide variety of other inflammatory and pathological process as well. The normal healthy body maintains a perfect balance of angiogenesis modulators. For this reason, antiangiogenic therapies aimed at halting new blood vessel growth are being developed to treat diseases that involves angiogenesis such as cancer, diabetes retinopathy and rheumatism to name a few.
Mixtures of interacting compounds produced by plants may provide important combination therapies that concurrently have an effect on multiple pharmacological targets and provide clinical effectiveness beyond the reach of single compound-based drugs. The chemotherapeutic agents can be combined with botanical therapeutics, the plant-produced compounds which are used to treat and prevent diseases or maintain health and wellness.
Mitragyna speciosa or locally known as ketum was found to contain various alkaloids which makes it useful in the treatment of hypertension and boost the immune system. It was also found to contain some antioxidant compounds, which usually tend to have antiangiogenic properties. From the molecular modeling packages, the results showed that the plant product exhibits the antiangiogenic activity. For that reason, my work is to prove that the plant product is antiangiogenic and if so, to determine the mechanism that synergize the activity on how these extracts would be beneficial to perturb tumor growth.
