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Local GRU Ph.D. student makes huge discovery in cancer research

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Reporter: Laura Warren

News 12 at 6 o'clock / Friday, Feb. 15, 2013

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW) -- Cancer researchers right here in Augusta may have found a huge discovery for treating cancer patients.
It's a pretty complicated discovery, but it all boils down to better chemotherapy that could kill cancer cells.

Chaitanya Patwardhan is a trained dentist, but he isn't drilling any cavities these days -- he's doing cancer research at GRU.

"I saw some of my family members suffering from cancer, and being a clinician ... we still couldn't save her, so that was the starting point," he said.

Patwardhan decided to go back to school to help find a way to help people with cancer, people like Donald Kitt.

"I went to do a colonoscopy test in '04, and they discovered something was wrong," Kitt said.

Doctors diagnosed him with a rare form of cancer, and they didn't give him very good odds.

"You got to have a second chance to understand how important life is," he said.

Fast forward eight years, and Kitt's still here, doing better than ever after signing up for experimental cancer treatment at the medical school.

"I'm just glad to be in the midst of the area that has the technology to work toward that goal," he said.

Which brings us back to Patwardhan, whose team may have just discovered a huge piece to solving the cancer puzzle.

"That was really an 'aha' moment for us. Because that was new," Patwardhan said.

His professor said, "This is clearly, I think, a very important step."

What they found has been here all along -- a compound in a plant that could help kill cancer cells.

"If we can inactivate the molecular chaperones with chemotherapy, and this is one kind, we will kill the cancer cells," Dr. Ahmed Chadli said.

Those molecular chaperones help keep cancer cells alive, and if you can figure out a way to stop those, maybe you can figure out a way to stop the spread of cancer.

"This is the work of three years. It has been really hard work and long long long hours," Chadli said.

But strides in cancer research like this, right here in our own community, are what give patients like Kitt hope for the future.

"I believe at some point probably during my life time, this cancer thing probably going to be solved," Kitt said.