Dr. Subhash Basu, professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry, will embark on a speaking tour of India on Tuesday to discuss his current research on potential new anti-cancer drugs.

Basu will make his second appearance at the International Cancer Research Symposium on Dec. 19 in Calcutta when he gives a lecture titled Probable New Therapeutic Drugs for Breast and Colon Cancers.

The invitation to this symposium is very prestigious. Sixty people from all over the world are going to Calcutta, he said. I will tell them what our plan is for the delivery of these new anti-cancer drugs.

Basus lecture tour will also include an appearance at the Indian Science Congress on Jan. 4, where he will discuss the apoptotic, or cell-killing, effects of the drugs he is working with his collaborators to develop.

Our work is important, and we get an invitation every year to speak at these sorts of things, he said.

Basu said he and his research team have discovered five to six different new anti-cancer compounds that would be useful for treating colon and breast cancer patients.

These chemicals are quite toxic to biological cells and they kill cancer cells by enhancing apoptosis, or programmed cell death, in a very micro amount, he said.

Now that these cancer-killing compounds have been discovered, Basu said the main goal of his work is to determine ways to deliver the drugs into patients at the location of the cancer without harming the healthy cells around the cancerous ones.

Cancer cells normally die of necrosis they make holes in themselves, he said. When apoptosis happens, the cell gets bigger and its DNA starts degrading until the cell cannot function.

Basu said about 50,000 women die of breast cancer in the United States each year, so his research could impact thousands of lives in the future.

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Doctor plans to tour India