Mango – Preventing Growth of Colon and Breast Cancer Cells
January 21,2010
Natural News
By S. L. Baker
Take a bite of a juicy, sweet mango and you are experiencing a delicious taste enjoyed by countless people from ancient times until today. According to the Orlando-based National Mango Board (NMG), a mango industry-sponsored research, promotion and consumer information program, mangos are known to be rich in vitamins C and A, as well as fiber. However, because little has been documented about any specific health benefits of eating the fruit, NMB has commissioned a variety of scientific studies to investigate these issues.
So far, this research initiative has turned up an unexpected and groundbreaking discovery: in laboratory experiments in Texas A&M University’s AgriLife Research department mango fruit prevented or stopped cancer growth in certain breast and colon cell lines.
Food scientists Dr. Susanne Talcott and her co-researcher husband, Dr. Steve Talcott, used the five varieties of mangos (Kent, Francine, Ataulfo, Tommy/Atkins and Haden) most common in the US and specifically tested polyphenol extracts from the fruit on colon, breast, lung, leukemia and prostate cancer cells. Polyphenols are natural substances in plants that are antioxidants with the potential to protect the body from disease. The Talcotts zeroed in on evaluating polyphenolic compounds in mangos known as gallotannins, a class of natural bioactive compounds believed to help prevent or block the growth of cancer cells.
The results? The Talcotts’ experiments showed that the mango extract demonstrated some cancer fighting ability when tested on lung, leukemia and prostate cancer cells. But when tested on the most common breast and colon cancers, mango compounds were found to have even stronger anticancer abilities. In fact, the mango extract caused the breast and colon cancer cells to undergo apoptosis — programmed cell death.
“Additionally, we found that when we tested normal colon cells side by side with the colon cancer cells, the mango polyphenolics did not harm the normal cells,” Dr. Susanne Talcott said in a statement to the press. “That is a general observation for any natural agent, that they target cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone, in reasonable concentrations at least.”
The researchers documented that the cancer cell cycle (the division process cells go through) was interrupted by mango extract. This is crucial information, Suzanne Talcott said in a press statement, because it could explain a possible mechanism for how the cancer cells are prevented or stopped by phytochemicals in mangos. “For cells that may be on the verge of mutating or being damaged, mango polyphenolics prevent this kind of damage,” she explained.
The scientists have conducted additional research on the colon cancer cell lines because mangos contain small molecules that are readily absorbed in the colon as well as larger molecules that are not absorbed and remain present longer in the colon. Those facts could potentially make eating mangos a potent way to help prevent colon cancer. In fact, the Talcotts are hoping to next conduct a small clinical trial to see if mangos can prevent colon cancer in people at high risk for a malignancy because they have increased inflammation in their intestines.
Click here to read the full report
Vitamin D Prevents of Breast Cancer?
October 13, 2009
NaturalNews
By Mike Adams
You’ve heard the good news about vitamin D for years: It’s a “miracle” medicine that reduces cancer rates by 77% according to previous research (http://www.naturalnews.com/021892_c…). It also happens to be a powerful anti-cancer medicine that can both prevent and help reverse breast cancer.
Yet, bewilderingly, the cancer industry still refuses to teach women about vitamin D. Ever wonder why?
Today, we bring you a compilation of expert quotations on vitamin D and breast cancer, cited from some of the most authoritative books and authors in the world. Feel free to share what you learn here with others who may also be suffering from breast cancer.
Vitamin D and breast cancer
Sunlight triggers the formation of vitamin D in the skin, which can be activated in the liver and kidneys into a hormone with great activity. This activated form of vitamin D causes “cellular differentiation” – essentially the opposite of cancer. The following evidence indicates that vitamin D might have a protective role against breast cancer: Synthetic vitamin D-like molecules have prevented the equivalent of breast cancer in animals.
- The Natural Pharmacy: Complete A-Z Reference to Natural Treatments for Common Health Conditions by Alan R. Gaby, M.D., Jonathan V. Wright, M.D., Forrest Batz, Pharm.D. Rick Chester, RPh., N.D., DipLAc. George Constantine, R.Ph., Ph.D. Linnea D. Thompson, Pharm.D., N.D.
Two equally effective sources of vitamin D in humans are derived from plant ergosterol, which is converted to ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) and cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) by the action of sunlight on the skin. The body uses vitamin D3 for normal immune system function, to control cellular growth, and to absorb calcium from the digestive tract. Vitamin D3 can inhibit the growth of malignant melanoma, breast cancer, leukemia, and mammary tumors in laboratory animals. Vitamin D3 can also inhibit angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels that permit the spread of cancer cells through the body.
- Permanent Remissions by Robert Hass, M.S.
There’s surprising new evidence that older women who skimp on foods rich in vitamin D are more likely to develop breast cancer, according to Frank Garland, Ph.D., of the Department of Community and Family Medicine at the University of California at San Diego. This may also help explain fish’s anticancer protection, because fatty fish is packed with vitamin D. Specifically, Dr. Garland finds that dietary vitamin D wards off postmenopausal breast cancer in women over fifty, but not in women who get cancer at younger ages.
- Food Your Miracle Medicine by Jean Carper
In animals fed a high fat diet, which normally would produce a higher incidence of colon cancer, supplements of calcium and vitamin D blocked this carcinogenic effect of the diet. Vitamin D inhibits the growth of breast cancer in culture, and also seems to subdue human breast cancer. Cells from human prostate cancer were put into a “…permanent nonproliferative state”, or shut down the cancer process, by the addition of vitamin D. Human cancer cells have been shown to have receptor sites, or stereo specific “parking spaces” for vitamin D.
- Beating Cancer with Nutrition by Patrick Quillin
Even though vitamin D is one of the most powerful healing chemicals in your body, your body makes it absolutely free. No prescription required. Diseases and conditions caused by vitamin D deficiency: Osteoporosis is commonly caused by a lack of vitamin D, which impairs calcium absorption. Sufficient vitamin D prevents prostate cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, depression, colon cancer, and schizophrenia. “Rickets” is the name of a bone-wasting disease caused by vitamin D deficiency.
- Natural Health Solutions by Mike Adams
George’s Hospital Medical School in London finds local production of vitamin D in breast tissue reduces the risk for breast cancer. For women with low breast tissue levels of vitamin D the risk for breast cancer rose by 354%! This study suggests women sunbathe with breast tissue exposed to the sun to enhance local vitamin D production. The provision of 400 IU of vitamin D per day has been found to reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer by 43%.
- You Don’t Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore by Bill Sardi
To continue reading this report, click here.
Vitamin D Prevents Breast Cancer
October 9, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
You’ve heard the good news about vitamin D for years: It’s a “miracle” medicine that reduces cancer rates by 77% according to previous research. It also happens to be a powerful anti-cancer medicine that can both prevent and help reverse breast cancer.
Yet, bewilderingly, the cancer industry still refuses to teach women about vitamin D. Ever wonder why?
Today, we bring you a compilation of expert quotations on vitamin D and breast cancer, cited from some of the most authoritative books and authors in the world. Feel free to share what you learn here with others who may also be suffering from breast cancer.
Vitamin D and breast cancer
Sunlight triggers the formation of vitamin D in the skin, which can be activated in the liver and kidneys into a hormone with great activity. This activated form of vitamin D causes “cellular differentiation” – essentially the opposite of cancer. The following evidence indicates that vitamin D might have a protective role against breast cancer: Synthetic vitamin D-like molecules have prevented the equivalent of breast cancer in animals.
Two equally effective sources of vitamin D in humans are derived from plant ergosterol, which is converted to ergocalciferol (vitamin D2) and cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) by the action of sunlight on the skin. The body uses vitamin D3 for normal immune system function, to control cellular growth, and to absorb calcium from the digestive tract. Vitamin D3 can inhibit the growth of malignant melanoma, breast cancer, leukemia, and mammary tumors in laboratory animals. Vitamin D3 can also inhibit angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels that permit the spread of cancer cells through the body.
- Permanent Remissions by Robert Hass, M.S.
There’s surprising new evidence that older women who skimp on foods rich in vitamin D are more likely to develop breast cancer, according to Frank Garland, Ph.D., of the Department of Community and Family Medicine at the University of California at San Diego. This may also help explain fish’s anticancer protection, because fatty fish is packed with vitamin D. Specifically, Dr. Garland finds that dietary vitamin D wards off postmenopausal breast cancer in women over fifty, but not in women who get cancer at younger ages.
- Food Your Miracle Medicine by Jean Carper
U.S. Pharmaceutical Factories Dumping Huge Quantities of Drugs Into Public Sewers, Rivers and Waterways
September 24, 2009
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
In spite of claims by pharmaceutical companies that they do not discharge their products into the water supply, federal researchers have discovered that waters downstream of pharmaceutical plants are more heavily contaminated with drug residue than waters elsewhere in the country.
In one study, conducted by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), researchers tested the water entering two water treatment plants down the sewer line of several pharmaceutical factories, as well as at other plants not receiving sewage from drug plants. Researchers discovered drugs at “much higher detection frequencies and concentrations” at the plants receiving effluent from pharmaceutical factories. Drugs detected included opiates, a barbiturate and a tranquilizer.
In a second study, researchers from the Environmental Protection Agency tested the water entering a wastewater treatment plant in the city of Kalamazoo, Mich., down the sewage line from a Pfizer drug factory. They found that the water entering the plant was exceptionally high in levels of the antibiotic lincomycin, which the factory was producing at that time.
“There’s some product going down the drain,” said Bruce Merchant, the city’s public services director.
Prior studies have shown that lincomycin can cause genetic mutations, and that it encourages the growth of cancer cells when combined with minute concentrations of a number of other drugs that are common in surface water.
The two studies are among the first to test longstanding claims by the pharmaceutical industry that factory emissions are not a significant source of drug residue in drinking water supplies.
“It’s critical that those types of assumptions are confirmed through real testing,” USGS researcher Herb Buxton said.
Research outside of the United States also suggests that pharmaceutical companies are major sources of drug pollution. In Switzerland, a test by drug company Roche found that a full 0.2 percent of active drug ingredients enter the environment during the manufacturing process. Another study found that 100 pounds of the antibiotic ciproflaxin were entering the water every day from a drug factory in India.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Ultra-Tiny ‘Bees’ Target Tumors
August 18, 2009
CNN
By Elizabeth Landau
They’re ready to sting, and they know where they’re going.
They’re called “nanobees,” and they’re not insects — they’re tiny particles designed to destroy cancer cells by delivering a synthesized version of toxin called melittin that is found in bees.
“Melittin, which would otherwise result in substantial destruction of your red blood cells and other normal tissues if it were delivered intravenously alone, is completely safe when it’s on a nanoparticle,” said Dr. Samuel Wickline, director of the Siteman Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Nanobees are one of the latest examples of how nanotechnology may change the way diseases are treated.
Nanotechnology encompasses a wide array of innovations that make use of structures that are 100 nanometers or smaller. That means they generally cannot be seen under a regular microscope, but are larger than individual atoms. For example, a nanobee is less than 10 times diameter of a red blood cell, Wickline said.
Particles on the nanoscale are small enough to enter cells, but big enough to carry large doses of drugs, said Robert Langer, Institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leader in the nanotech field.
“We are gradually forming a pipeline of nanotechnology-based products,” said Piotr Grodzinski, director of the National Cancer Institute’s Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, a program that funds eight Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence in the U.S., including Wickline’s and Langer’s research initiatives. “These things are happening as we speak.”
There have already been two approved cancer treatments on the market that make use of nanoparticles: ovarian cancer drug Doxil, approved in 1995, and breast cancer drug Abraxane, approved in 2005. Both of these involve medication bound with nanoparticles that circulate in the bloodstream for longer than conventional drugs and are expected to migrate to the tumor site, Grodzinski said. These drugs are being tested in some of the eight clinical trials associated with the NCI nano program.
Nanobees, by contrast, are engineered to travel directly to tumor cells without harming any others. They leave the healthy cells alone because the blood vessels around a tumor are like a “postal address” for the nanobees, Wickline said. These vessels express a particular protein to which a substance on the nanobees has a chemical affinity.
This principle of targeting harmful cells and leaving healthy cells intact is under development in many labs. It means efficient delivery of large concentrations of drugs, but with fewer side effects, experts say. One hundred trillion nanobees can be delivered in a single dose, and are not difficult to make, Wickline said. Also, scientists do not use real insects, so they’re “not decreasing the bee population,” he said.
So far nanobees have been tested only on mice, with promising results, researchers said. Wickline anticipates this therapy could become widely available in humans in about five years.
Dr. Ellen Vitetta, who also works on targeted nanotech cancer therapies at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, found the approach intriguing, but said it will be at least 10 years before something like this gets to the market. That’s because what works in mice doesn’t always work in humans, as she learned while developing a targeted antibody cancer treatment.
“People need to appreciate the time issues and the cost issues and just what sort of tests need to be done,” she said. “But it’s always fun and exciting to see a new approach, because who knows what’s going to end up at the finish line.”
Langer estimates that his group’s nanotechnology technique for prostate cancer could be in clinical trials by the middle of next year. The method involves putting an approved cancer drug, docetaxel, in a nanoparticle that has a homing device to take it directly to the tumor.
These nanoparticles are made out of some of the same materials often used for dissolvable sutures, Langer said. In addition to having an “affinity molecule,” which targets the tumor cells, these nanoparticles are coated with polyethylene glycol, which helps the particle get to its target without being “eaten” by white blood cells called macrophages.
Langer and colleagues have also been involved in a new treatment for ovarian cancer, as described in this month’s issue of the journal Cancer Research. The technique has shown success in mice, and could go into clinical trials within one to two years, said lead author Daniel Anderson at MIT. The group has published work on two methods, one using DNA and one using RNA. These particles do not have special targeting antibodies on them, but are injected straight into the abdominal cavity where the cancer cells are likely floating.
Other research groups are exploring the potential of carbon nanotubes, cylindrical carbon molecules that also have applications in electronics and other areas. Researchers led by Vitetta have developed a method of heating the nanotubes with infrared light, which then “cooked” and killed cancerous lymphoma cells.
Vitetta said she doesn’t want to move this treatment forward into humans until the researchers have resolved a number of issues about its potential toxicity.
Nanoparticles are also useful in medical diagnosis, researchers have found. Abigail Lytton-Jean, a postdoctoral fellow in Langer’s lab, worked at Northwestern University on showing that gold nanoparticles can help detect the presence of DNA. When the nanoparticles are coated with a DNA sequence, the solution changes color in the presence of the corresponding DNA. One possible application of this would be anthrax detection, she said.
While a lot of new research is ongoing with nano-sized materials, the particles themselves are not new, and therefore should not cause any more safety concerns than other materials used in medicine, experts say.
“There are going to be nanomaterials that are toxic for sure, but I definitely do not think that because something is nano there’s any more reason to have alarm,” Lytton-Jean said.
Many of the NCI-sponsored nano centers, located at universities across the country, have spun off small companies, Grodzinski said. Kerios, which will make the nanobees, and BIND, which will work on Langer’s group’s prostate cancer therapy, are two of the 25 companies that have arisen from the research.
The pharmaceutical giants, meanwhile, are watching what comes out of them, he said.
“They probably will acquire some of these companies,” he said.
Click here for the full report from CNN
