Cancer Cures In The Herbal Pharmacy

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Cancer Cures In The Herbal Pharmacy

05 Mar 2008

Curing cancer with natural products - a case for shamans and herb women? Not at

all, for many chemotherapies to fight cancer applied in modern medicine are

natural products or were developed on the basis of natural substances. Thus,

taxanes used in prostate and breast cancer treatment are made from yew trees.

The popular periwinkle plant, which grows along the ground of many front yards,

is the source of vinca alkaloids that are effective, for example, against

malignant lymphomas. The modern anti-cancer drugs topotecan and irinotecan are

derived from a constituent of the Chinese Happy Tree.

Looking for new compounds, doctors and scientists are increasingly focusing on

substances from plants used in traditional medicine. About three quarters of the

natural pharmaceutical compounds commonly used today are derived from plants of

the traditional medicine of the people in various parts of the world. The

chances of finding new substances with interesting working profiles in

traditional medicinal plants are better than in common-or-garden botany.

In his search for active ingredients, Professor Dr. Efferth of the DKFZ

has been concentrating on herbal remedies from traditional Chinese medicine with

particularly well documented application range. Working together with colleagues

in Mainz and Düsseldorf, Germany, Graz, Austria and Kunming in China, he

launched a systematic compound search in 76 Chinese medicinal plants that are

believed to be effective against malignant tumors and other growths. First

results of this study have now been published.

Extracts from 18 of the plants under investigation were found to substantially

suppress the growth of a cancer cell line in the culture dish. " With this

success rate of about 24 percent, we are way above the results that could be

expected from searching through large chemical substance libraries, "

Efferth explains.

The scientists proceeded to chemically separate, step by step, all active

extracts, tracing the active component after each separation step by cell tests.

The chemical structure of the compounds is analyzed using nuclear magnetic

resonance and mass spectroscopy. " We are combining natural substance research

with advanced analytical and molecular-biological methods " , Efferth explains.

" Plant constituents that seem particularly promising are immediately subjected

to further tests. " Such constituents include, for example, substances derived

from the Rangoon Creeper, an ornamental plant with red flowers, or from Red-Root

Sage. The latter contains three ingredients with powerful anti-tumor activity.

The substances were found to suppress the growth of a specific tumor cell line

that is particularly resistant to many commonly used cytotoxins due to

overproduction of a transport protein in the cell wall. In contrast, a whole

range of standard anti-cancer drugs fail to be effective against this cell.

We can expect to find many interesting, yet unknown working mechanisms among the

chemically highly diverse natural substances. Currently, we are aligning the

effectiveness of the substances on 60 different cancer cell lines with the gene

activity profiles of these cells. Thus, we can determine the exact gene products

that are the cellular targets of our compounds. Thereby, it may be possible to

discover whole new Achilles' heels of the cancer cell, " said Efferth describing

the next steps.

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.

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Efferth, Stefan Kahl, Kerstin us, , Rolf Rauh, Herbert

Boechzelt, Xiaojiang Hao, Bernd Kaina and Rudolf Bauer: Phytochemistry and

Pharmacogenomics of Natural products derived from traditional Chinese medica

with activity against tumor cells. Molecular Cancer Therapy 7 (1) 2008, page 152

The task of the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum in Heidelberg (German Cancer

Research Center, DKFZ) is to systematically investigate the mechanisms of cancer

development and to identify cancer risk factors. The results of this basic

research are expected to lead to new approaches in the prevention, diagnosis and

treatment of cancer. The Center is financed to 90 percent by the Federal

Ministry of Education and Research and to 10 percent by the State of

Baden-Wuerttemberg. It is a member of the Helmholtz Association of National

Research Centers (Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren e.V.).

Source: Dr. Sibylle Kohlstädt

Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres

Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/99574.php