There was no point in continuing treatment for Anastasia Zavorotnyuk.
Photo: Larisa KUDRYAVTSEVA/EG.
Was it possible to save Anastasia Zavorotnyuk? Was it a cruel joke that her family accepted a new experimental treatment? Could the IVF artificial insemination procedure, thanks to which actress Milana’s daughter was born, cause brain cancer? Komsomolskaya Pravda spoke with Petr Chumakov, an expert in the field of molecular biology of cancer, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and head of the cell proliferation laboratory at the VA Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology.
– Glioblastoma (a form of brain tumor that Anastasia Zavorotnyuk suffered from – editor’s note) is a deadly disease. Without treatment, people live with this diagnosis for several months, and with the best therapy, up to two years. Anastasia lived for five years, although treatment began when she had two relapses of the disease. So the therapy worked and worked well,” says Pyotr Chumakov.
Anastasia Zavorotnyuk with her husband Piotr Chernyshev.
Photo: Boris KUDRYAVOV.
HOW WAS ANASTASIA ZAVOROTNYUK TREATED?
At the Petrov Institute of Oncology in St. Petersburg, the actress was offered one of the most advanced methods of treating glioblastoma. With this method, immune dendritic cells are isolated from the patient’s blood, mixed with tumor cells, “trained” to recognize them, and returned to the body to specifically combat the tumor.
– Anastasia’s husband, Piotr Chernyshev, also contacted us in the laboratory. Having received tumor cells from St. Petersburg, we determined how sensitive they are to our oncolytic viruses (a method of cancer therapy that the scientist is developing – editor’s note). And they have identified several oncolytic viruses that would be suitable for treatment,” says Piotr Chumakov. – Pyotr Chernyshev said that this is very good, but now, they say, everything is more or less fine for us. And, if necessary, we will contact you. This was three years ago. But they didn’t apply. Apparently they have already decided that this is not particularly promising. Because, as you understand, a person in the condition that Anastasia developed will never be the same again. It’s a pain anyway. Even if the tumor process ends, the person will become a practically helpless disabled person. I don’t know how nice it would be for a person to continue living like this. Maybe they just didn’t want to torture her.
Daughter of Anastasia Zavorotnyuk and her elderly mother.
Photo: social networks.
– Pyotr Mikhailovich, could the IVF procedure somehow cause the disease?
– Nobody knows. If we evaluate reliable scientific data, today there is no information that IVF can in any way influence the formation or development of glioblastoma. You know, there is a theory, confirmed by many data, that initial mutations at the cellular level arise during embryonic brain development and are in a state as “silent” as “latent.” But this does not mean that a brain tumor will definitely occur.
Photo: Evgenia GUSEVA.
WHAT ARE THE MOST PROMISING CANCER TREATMENT METHODS?
Any method related to chemotherapy is definitely not promising, our expert believes. They kill only those tumor cells that are actively dividing, and the rest, under such influence, change so rapidly that they evade treatment. The result is cancer cells that are resistant to any influence and cannot be contained by anything. Therefore, chemotherapy for glioblastoma only works for a few months, perhaps up to a year. And then, a serious relapse.
The future lies in a treatment that targets precisely the cause of the disease and uses biological and natural human mechanisms.
One of these ways is the use of oncolytic viruses, which penetrate the tumor and begin to multiply there, changing the “landscape” of the tumor itself. After such exposure, tumor cells begin to secrete substances that attract immune cells and direct them toward the tumor itself. This begins the process of destroying cancer cells from within the tumor and through the body’s own forces.
– We are now at a stage where we have already identified the basic mechanisms of cancer and are looking for ways to influence these mechanisms. For now, oncolytic viruses are an experimental area, the “last hope” therapy, but I think that within 15 to 20 years they will become the basis of cancer treatment, says Piotr Chumakov.
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