By AMANDA BOWSER
There is a cure for cancer, but we must make the contribution to find it, said the director of BYU’s Cancer Research Center.
Dr. Daniel L. Simmons said there are two ways BYU is working to fight against cancer. The first is through prevention and the second is through effective treatment.
“We want to effectively contribute to both areas,” Simmons said.
Simmons said the research center does not have a shortage of interested students, but a shortage of opportunity and space available for them.
“A lot of students have a desire to contribute,” Simmons said.
There are over one hundred undergraduate and graduate students involved annually in the program, with members from more than six departments, according to the Cancer Research Center Web site.
Chad Cox, 22, from Parowan, Iron County, is a senior majoring in chemistry and working in Simmons’ lab.
After being diagnosed with hemophilia at age 15, Cox said his interest in research was sparked, though at age 21 he was told it was a false diagnosis.
“Research in general is really interesting to me,” Cox said.
One of Simmons’ research assistants, Ken Westover, from Claremont, Calif., said it was Simmons who inspired him to go into cancer research.
“He’s working on a fundamental problem,” Westover said. “I admire a lot of people in this field.”
Westover and Cox are working together under a grant from a pharmaceutical company to understand the enzyme cyclooxygenase-2 and its possible use as a K-9 pain killer.
Simmons discovered the enzyme cyclooxygenase-2 at BYU in 1991. He said this enzyme, COX-2, is one of the targets in cells that drugs like aspirin work to inhibit.
Westover said the enzyme is found in every species and it would be beneficial in many areas to understand it better, including the field of cancer prevention.
Nirmalee Abayasekara, 30, from Sri-Lanka, is a graduate student in the Cancer Research Center working with the COX-2 enzyme and its interaction with the protein nucleobindin.
Abayasekara said the finding of an interaction could lead to either a prevention or treatment for cancer, depending on the type of interaction.
Simmons said with further research, cancer vaccinations could be a possible solution to cancer prevention.
“Right now we do not have people in the area of cancer vaccinations which I think is an important area,” Simmons said.
Dr. Kim O’Neill, associate director of the Cancer Research Center, developed a procedure for testing if a tumor is malignant.
O’Neill said the kit tests thymidine kinase levels in the blood. If the thymidine kinase levels are high, there is a greater possibility the patient does have some form of cancer, he said.
According to O’Neill the kit was patented in 1996 and is going through the licensing stages now. He said it is a test that can be done directly in the doctor’s office as a routine check for cancer.
