Rarest element used in cancer cureextracted from Kutch mushrooms

Rajkot: Mushrooms growing in India's largest district Kutch can potentially provide the key chemical element for an emerging radiation therapy given to cancer patients. Scientists at Gujarat Institute of Desert Ecology (GUIDE) and Kutch University have successfully extracted astatine, the rarest naturally occurring element on the earth, from edible mushrooms.

Astatine, which is not just rare but also has an extremely short life, is said to cause minimal side effects that come with chemotherapy. Scientists say availability of astatine on earth is just a few grams as this radioactive element decays within hours.

V Vijay Kumar, director, GUIDE said, "Cobalt radiation is used in chemotherapy for cancer treatment. But cobalt remains inside the body for a longer time and damages cancer cells as well as the healthy ones, which results in side effects. Astatine only targets cancer cells and gets deactivated after some time, thus causing minimal damage to the body."

The common side effects of chemotherapy are hair loss, weakness, nausea and vomiting, blood clots, memory loss and others. As cobalt remains in the body for a long time, the gap between two chemotherapy sessions is also more.
K Karthikeyan, principal scientist at GUIDE working on this project, claimed, "Researchers across the world have found that this radioactive element will improve radioimmunotherapy (RIT) efficiency for treating tumours and other cancers since it kills the tumour cells that are typically resistant to chemo and radioactive therapy."

"A large number of studies and research is underway in the world on astatine's therapeutic use, but the problem is the supply of this element is limited because only a few places can make it. As a result, a more in-depth research is difficult due to the less availability. However, if it can be extracted from mushrooms, hopes of better cancer treatment are bright," he added.

GUIDE has successfully cultivated edible as well as medical mushrooms in recent times. The scientists gave some edible mushrooms for laboratory evaluation to the chemistry department of Kutch university which has highly sophisticated high-end equipment.

Vijay Ram, assistant professor of the chemistry department claimed, "During testing, we found the rarest of the rare element astatine. We confirmed the presence of this element and informed GUIDE."

G Jayanthi, another scientist at GUIDE, said, "We are planning to take the research further so that funding is available to support the study for further characterization and purification of the element. This will enable cancer patients to overcome the impacts of chemotherapy."