Dr. Dhiraj Vattem, a professor in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, and Texas State Department of Agriculture Chair Dr. Reed Richardson co-investigated the new compound.
“We have a product we’ve been testing in the laboratory. All we’ve done so far is in vitro testing, which is artificial settings outside the organism,” Dr. Richardson said. “It is a compound that looks very effective in changing some of the metabolic pathways that are responsible for the cancer to either attach or grow.”
Dr. Richardson said that with the particular compound they have been testing, results were very consistent.
“It’s a silicon-based compound, and we use this at different levels to test these different systems, within cancer cells, as well as the HIV virus,” Dr. Richardson said. “We got real promise and results from that.”