Plantenproduct doodt longkankercellen
Een plantenmengsel is, volgens een nieuw Amerikaans onderzoek, in staat longkankercellen te vernietigen en gezonde cellen te beschermen tegen de ziekte.
If the compound shows itself to be effective and safe in people, it may one day be offered to people at risk of lung cancer, such as smokers, study author Dr. Ho-Young Lee of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston told Reuters Health.
During the current study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Lee and her colleagues added deguelin to human cells taken from the inside of the structures leading into the lungs.
The authors found that deguelin both slowed the growth of cancer cells and destroyed healthy cells that were at risk of becoming cancerous, without harming normal cells.
Deguelin appears to inhibit the spread of lung cancer by “dampening the process, and slowing everything down,” Crowell said in an interview.
In terms of how deguelin targets cells in danger of becoming cancerous and avoids normal cells, Lee and her colleagues suggest that the plant extract attacks a substance known as Akt that is present at higher levels in precancerous cells than in normal cells.
