The Wonders of Cotton
June 23, 2010 A couple of years ago, I was surfing around on the Internet for information on raw cottonseed. My thinking was that many times growers don’t include the value of cottonseed with the lint value when they calculate per-acre income.
I still think that, but I got seriously sidetracked when I stumbled onto some information on cancer research being conducted at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) using the cottonseed derivative gossypol to treat glioblastoma multiforme, one of the most feared and hopelessly untreatable forms of cancerous brain tumors. Mercifully, if you get it, the tumor grows fast and death comes quickly. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery typically only prolong, not preserve, life.
The UAB research is a Phase II Clinical Trial of AT-101, which, in pill form, contains gossypol. In the tests to date, AT-101 stopped the progression of tumor growth in many patients and boosted the cancer-fighting properties of other current treatments, as well.
Ascenta Therapeutics, Inc. is advancing AT-101 as a potential treatment, but it has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
But AT-101 is giving glioblastoma multiforme patients something they didn’t have before ― hope.
“After getting this drug, some of the patients went many months without any new growth in their tumors,” said UAB’s Dr. John Fiveash. “We are able to do that with a well-tolerated oral medication, and that is a major benefit.”
In mid-May, Dr. Seshadri Ramkumar, associate professor of nonwoven materials at Texas Tech’s Institute of Environmental and Human Health said that raw cotton could serve as the perfect sponge for soaking up oil that has been gushing from the destroyed Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Already, several million feet of oil-containment booms have been used to capture the oil spilling into the Gulf,” said Ramkumar. “They are made of synthetic materials, don’t biodegrade and absorb only a third of what raw cotton can do. The properties of raw cotton allow it to soak up 40 times its weight. With chemical modifications, it can soak up to as much as 70 times its weight. And it won’t just stay in a landfill forever.”
It seems the more ways we look at cotton, the more ways we find to use it.
I’ll end with something that’s not as glamorous as a possible cure for cancer or solving a disaster of Ole Testament proportions, yet it’s a basic fact about “The Fabric of our Lives.” Former U. S. Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) said once, “Half the world does not know the joy of wearing cotton underwear.”
I’m in the one-half that does know the joy. Want to see?
GET THE NEWSLETTER TODAY!
