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Some fruits and vegetables like these strawberries
have natural chemicals that can destroy leukemia cells in laboratory tests.
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Food Compounds That Kill Test-Tube Cancer Cells Analyzed
By Marcia Wood
March 4, 2008 Strawberries, grapes, blueberries and
some familiar seasonings like rosemary contain compounds that canin test
tubeskill cells of a childhood cancer. Nutrition-focused research by
molecular biologist
Susan
J. Zunino of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Western Human Nutrition Research Center
(WHNRC),
Davis, Calif., may reveal exactly how the powerful plant chemicals fight the
disease known as acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Zunino's current studies build upon her 2006 findings about the ability of
carnosol from rosemary; curcumin from turmeric; resveratrol from grapes; and
ellagic acid, kaempferol and quercetin from strawberries to kill the leukemia
cells. She did the work using laboratory cultures of both healthy human blood
cells and cancerous ones as her model.
Her studies are of interest not only to cancer researchers, but also to
nutrition scientists exploring the health benefits of natural compounds in the
world's fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices.
For the most part, scientists don't yet have all the details about how plant
chemicals, or phytochemicals, bolster healthy cells and battle harmful ones.
That's true even for better-known phytochemicals such as the resveratrol in
grapes, blueberries and some other fruits, according to Zunino.
Her investigations provide some new clues about how phytochemicals attack
cancer cells. For example, she found that the phytochemicals interfere with the
orderly operations of mitochondria, the miniature energy-producing power plants
inside cells. Without energy, cells die.
Mitochondria exposed to resveratrol and the other phytochemicals that Zunino
tested couldn't function properly. But more work is needed, to fully understand
how the phytochemicals achieved that.
And, Zunino and colleagues want to know more about the phytochemicals' other
modes of action that result in cell death.
She's collaborating in the investigations with molecular biologist
David
Storms at WHNRC; Jonathan Ducore at the
University of California-Davis
Cancer Center; and Navindra Seeram, formerly with the
University of California-Los Angeles and now
at the University of Rhode Island-Kingston.
Read
more about the research in the March 2008 issue of Agricultural
Research magazine.
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.