African medicinal plant stops cancerous tumors

Study: African medicinal plants stop tumor growth

06/12/2013

Medicinal plants from Africa contain chemical substances that can stop the growth of cancer cells. Researchers from Mainz discovered this in laboratory tests. The phytonutrients will now be further investigated to estimate the therapeutic benefit. "The identified drugs from African medicinal plants are capable of killing cancer cells that are resistant to multiple drugs, providing an excellent foundation for developing new therapies for the treatment of tumors that can not be controlled with conventional chemotherapy ", says Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Efferth from the Institute of Pharmacy and Biochemistry of the Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU).

Multidrug resistance is one of the most dreaded problems in cancer therapy because in most cases, most of the cancer drugs established in clinical practice fail.

Many plants contain toxic substances that protect against predators and microbial diseases. For the pharmacologists, the art now is to distinguish plant substances that have a healing effect from those that are only toxic and dangerous.

In their most recent publication, the scientists showed that four naturally occurring benzophenones could prevent the spread of the tested cancer cell lines, including multidrug-resistant lines. (Kuete V et al., Cytotoxicity and modes of action of four naturally occurring benzophenones: 2,2_, 5,6_-tetrahydroxybenzophenones, guttiferone E, isogarcinol and isoxanthochymol., Phytomedicine, April 2013. DOI: 10.1016 / j.phymed.2013.02.003 )

Picture: M. Großmann (Picture did not show the medicinal plant)