PETALING JAYA: The current Movement Control Order (MCO) could potentially affect non-coronavirus related research such as cancer, a researcher told TheSun.
Sapna Revindran is a postgraduate student from University Putra Malaysia currently pursuing a Masters in Pharmacology and Toxicology. “We conduct scientific research on plant-based compounds and their potential to cure cancer,” Sapna told TheSun.
“We have cultivated pancreatic cancer cells for our research, and it took us almost a year,” she added.
However, she mentioned that the current MCO is a worry because it could delay her findings. “The information from our research could be used by scientists all around the world in the fight against cancer. But with the MCO in place, there could be a delay in our findings,” she told TheSun.
According to Sapna, the cultivated cancer cells are kept in incubators that replicate the conditions of a human body, but now they must be frozen at very low temperatures. “When we incubate these cancer cells, we must constantly feed it nutrients. Because of the MCO we must cryopreserve them, basically freezing time for the cells so that it doesn’t die,” Sapna said.
Even though the researchers are keeping the cells alive through cryopreservation, it does come with a set of problems. “For cryopreservation, we must use nitrous oxide to keep the cells at low temperatures. There’s a small chance that if there’s a leak in the container, the cells would die,”
“Also, keeping these cells at extremely low temperatures puts the cells in a condition that they’re not normally used too. It may be highly unlikely, but it could cause the data collected from our future research to be affected,” she said.
