Cancer versus anticancer factors: A review of these factors, health impacts, and awareness
Authors: Chowdhury Uttam , Chowdhury Shreya 
Published: August 2024

Cancer is a disease that is caused when cells begin to divide without stopping and spreading into surrounding tissues by any changes or damage to DNA. Most cancer disease cases are due to environmental risk factors, and many of these factors are controllable lifestyle choices. Free radicals are risk factors that cause cancer, but antioxidants are anti-risk factors that work as anticancer and protect our health from diseases like cancer. It would be very important to know how these risk and anti-risk factors work, and how we could maintain and protect our health. Free radicals (FRs) have an unpaired electron in their outer orbit that make them very unstable because they want to keep pair of electrons in their outer orbit, and their reactivity is very strong for that missing electron to become stable. Due to that, FRs attack healthy/normal cells for electrons that they can find to become stable. Free radicals could take electrons from DNA molecules, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and other molecules, damaging and turning them into new free radicals. In this process, free radical chain reactions damage the entire cell, then their neighbors, and so on. Having too many free radicals in the body increases the likelihood of damage to healthy cells. This resulting damage is called oxidative damage Dr. Uttam Chowdhury, Ph.D., is a renowned researcher in the field of arsenics. He worked in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Arizona, USA (2003-2010) as an Assistant Research Professor/Researcher/Co-PI with a renowned Toxicologist named Prof. H. Vas Aposhian. With a Ph.D. in Science from SOES (School of Environmental Science), Jadavpur University, India, under the supervision of Dr. Dipankar Chakraborti, one of the world-famous scientists on the field of arsenic research, Dr. Chowdhury has made significant contributions to the field of environmental science on arsenic research. His scholarly output includes over 90 research articles in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, conference papers and abstracts, with publications in prestigious journals such as Nature. Uttam Chowdhury's enormous scientific merit is demonstrated through 6810 citations (25 publications cited more than 50 times and one publication cited more than 1320 times), 39931 reads, 3354 research interest score, and an h-index of 34 till today, January 31, 2024 (Source: ResearchGate and Google Scholar). One of his publications has been reported as entitled “Arsenic in Asia-Water at Its Worst” on the “Science Selections” in the EHP journal (May 2000, Volume 108, Number 5, Page A 224) by Karen Breslin. This topic was also selected and used as the cover page of this journal (EHP, May 2000, Volume 108, Number 5). Dr. Chowdhury's research has been recognized with several awards and fellowships, including a Research Fellowship in 2002 at the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Ministry of the Environment, Japan, focusing on environmental planning for global environment protection. He also received Research Fellowships in 2001 and 2000 from the National Institute of Health Sciences (NIHS), Ministry of the Environment, Japan, dedicated to maintaining global environmental protection.