KARACHI: The only effective solution to a disease like cancer is fighting it with passion and to ‘find it before it finds you’, maintain a healthy lifestyle and keep looking for early detection as no other solution to the deadly disease is possible.

This was said by Dr Azra Raza, the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine and Clinical Director at Columbia University’s Edward P. Evans Foundation MDS Center during a lecture at Habib University here on Friday.

The lecture, ‘Confronting with Passion the Conundrum of Life’, was part of Habib University’s Yoshin lecturer series and was moderated by Dr Najeeb Jan, Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities at Habib University. Founding president of Habib University Wasif Rizvi was the host.

Reciting poetic verses and referring to renowned poets, Dr Raza said the major problems of life, including such as cancer could be fought only with and through passion.

Dr Azra Raza says the disease mostly spreads through heredity, infections and toxic exposures

In her latest book, titled The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, she emphasises on detecting the earliest cancer cells in human body through blood samples. She said that she had established a think tank with major US universities and institutes and the conclusion it reached at was “we should find cancer before it finds us”.

She said she and her team were developing a method, a Bispecific Antibody, to target the Giant Cell.

She said in most other diseases, cells stayed in their respective organs but cancer was the only disease in which the cells walked out of their organs of origin and spread to others. Cancer cells give birth to other cells, which are called Giant Cells, which she calls as the first cell. These Giant Cells constantly mutate and evolve. There are spontaneous somatic mutations in them and that’s why it is very important to detect it as earlier as possible.

Speaking about the causes of cancer, Dr Raza said there were many reasons for the disease but it mostly spread through infections and toxic exposures. She said some types of cancer were also hereditary.

She said presently around 60% of cancer patients were being cured but even those also had to through very painful treatment methods as little progress had been made in the methods and same methods were being used in many cases that were being used decades ago. “This is not the solution to cancer,” she added.

Furthermore, she said that even the present day treatment would be effective and helpful only when applied early. Similarly, lifestyle changes were important but, she said, that would only make a difference at early stage and early detection.

She strongly opposed the conventional “slash-poison-burn” approach and advocated for a more cost-effective, less toxic, and efficient strategy for the future.

Emphasising the importance of collecting human samples, she said that animal samples were not effective for detecting human cancer and, therefore, collecting and studying human samples was necessary.

And for this, she said she started collecting all kinds of human blood samples. So far she had collected more than 60,000 human blood samples and had established Raza Tissue Repository in the US, which she said was the world’s only repository with tissues collected by a single person.

Many cancer survivors were at risk of developing the disease again, she said. Therefore, those who had family history of cancer, should adopt a healthy lifestyle, particularly quit smoking and alcohol and start exercising properly. Similarly, they should also look for early detection.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2023