Of Enzymes, Worms
and Cancer
The War on Cancer
(lumbrokinase enzyme)
11/1/2004
Townsend Letter for Doctors and
Patients
By Ralph W. Moss
That unloved little girl of the children's rhyme, who sat in the garden eating
worms, may have been onto something. There is a new health product on the
market called lumbrokinase, which is derived from the common earthworm,
Lumbricus rubellus. Along with ants, insects and other creepy-crawly things,
earthworms have for thousands of years been a staple of Traditional Chinese
Medicine (Mihara 1992). One ancient Chinese medical text, the Ben Cao Gang Mu
(or Compendium of Medicine) states that earthworms (known as "Di
Lung") are useful in unblocking the body's acupuncture meridians and
channels, improving circulation and overcoming numbness in the limbs.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In a beautifully written 1883 book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through
the Action of Worms, no less a luminary than Sir Charles Darwin observed the ability
of worms to digest just about everything in their path. He compared the juices
of the earthworm's digestive tract to the pancreatic secretions in humans:
"The digestive fluid of worms is of the same nature as the pancreatic
secretion of the higher animals," wrote the great English biologist,
"and this conclusion agrees perfectly with the kinds of food which worms
consume. Pancreatic juice emulsifies fat, and we have just seen how greedily
worms devour fat; it dissolves fibrin, and worms eat raw meat; it converts
starch into grape-sugar with wonderful rapidity, and we shall presently show
that the digestive fluid of worms acts on starch."
It was in fact the ability of the worm's digestive juices to dissolve fibrin
that attracted the attention of scientists a century later. During the 1970s,
Prof. Shan Hongren discovered the enzymatic functions of an extract of
earthworms. For this he was honored with the United Nations Science Conference
Award in 1978. In 1997, a product made from earthworms, named Plasmin, was
approved by the Chinese government as a new medicine. In 1999, the China
Medical Society made Plasmin a key product to be promoted all over China. In the
same year it was registered by the China Supervisory and Administrative Bureau
as a class 2 nationally protected TCM formula, and in 2000 it was included in
the Chinese National Pharmacopoeia--at least according to a number of
promotional websites (Health King 2004).
Starting in the 1980s, Japanese scientists confirmed this observation
experimentally when they isolated six proteolytic enzymes from earthworms. They
collectively named these enzymes lumbrokinase (LK). Lumbrokinase is now being
made available by a number of American food supplement distributors, including
Allergy Research Group of California.
There are presently 17 articles on lumbrokinase in the National Library of
Medicine's encyclopedic database, PubMed. This is not a great number, and only
one of these articles is a clinical study. However, this study concluded that
"lumbrokinase is beneficial to the treatment of cerebral infarction"
(Jin 2000). The substance also shows some potential in the postoperative care
of patients who have received prosthetic vascular grafts (Hwang 2002).
I learned about lumbrokinase from a prostate cancer patient, whose
naturopath suggested it as an alternative treatment. There are currently no
articles in PubMed on the use of lumbrokinase in cancer treatment. I therefore
would not support the use of lumbrokinase for this purpose until the necessary
clinical research has been done. But the basic concept is sound, and such
research is certainly warranted.
Role of Pancreatic Enzymes
There is considerable evidence to suggest that taking digestive enzymes may
be an important part of an overall anticancer program. This is the approach
taken by Nicholas J. Gonzalez, MD, of New
York City, whose pancreatic enzyme-based anticancer
regimen is currently being studied by the US National Institutes of Health
(NIH). The actual clinical trial of his regimen languishes for want of support
by the oncology community (Chowka 2002). But there was encouraging news this
May from the University
of Nebraska. An animal
study co-authored by Dr. Gonzalez and published in the peer-reviewed journal
Pancreas showed that the orally administered enzymes developed by Dr. Gonzalez
and his colleagues had profound health-promoting and anticancer effects.
In this study, pancreatic cancer was first grafted into nude mice, rodents
whose lack of a functioning immune system allows them to serve as living
laboratories for the study of cancer. The mice were then treated with porcine
pancreatic enzyme extracts (PPE) that were included in their drinking water. A
control group received no enzyme supplements.
Treated mice "survived significantly longer than the control
group," according to Murat Saruc, MD, and colleagues at the Eppley
Institute for Research in Cancer and Allied Diseases in Omaha. Additionally,
tumors in the PPE-treated group "were significantly smaller than in the
control group." All mice in the control group showed abnormalities of
metabolism in the early stages of tumor growth, "whereas only a few in the
treated group showed some of these abnormalities at the final stage." The
authors concluded that treatment with pancreatic enzymes "significantly
prolongs the survival of mice ... and slows the tumor growth" (Saruc,
2004).
Similar claims about pancreatic enzymes have been made for nearly a century.
However this was a rigorously conducted scientific study that was peer-reviewed
and published in the official journal of the American Pancreatic Association
and the Japan Pancreas Society.
For years opponents of alternative medicine have argued that enzymes taken
by mouth would be broken down in the stomach and inactivated before being able to
do much good at all. This point of view was thoroughly refuted in 2002 by three
physiologists at the University
of California-San Francisco.
They showed that digestive enzymes can be absorbed into blood, reabsorbed by
the pancreas, and reutilized, instead of being reduced to their constituent
amino acids in the intestines. This is called the enteropancreatic circulation
of digestive enzymes (Rothman 2002). But clearly news of this established fact
hasn't reached the implacable opponents of complementary medicine. For
instance, an attack on the work of Dr. Gonzalez, reprinted at the Quackwatch
website, states:
"Like all dietary proteins, enzymes are dismantled into constituent
amino acids by host proteolytic enzymes in the gastrointestinal tract, thus destroying
their enzymatic activity" (Green 1998).
This bucket-of-cold-water argument has now been thoroughly undercut by yet
another careful scientific study. We are often warned of the harmful effects of
unduly favorable statements about nutritional supplements. But what about
unduly negative statements? It was because of such dogmatic statements on the
alleged destruction of enzymes in the stomach that thousands of people have
been dissuaded from taking supplemental enzymes. Now we learn that certain enzymes
can not only survive the stomach but can enter the bloodstream in their active
form. However, I have yet to hear a word of correction or apology from the
self-proclaimed refuters of CAM cancer
treatments on this important topic.
Enzymes are an endlessly fascinating and extremely promising area of
medicine, including CAM. They are a natural
part of most raw foods and are created by our bodies to aid digestion. Explored
and then forgotten as treatments, they have been repeatedly rediscovered around
the world. I have mentioned the Asian work with earthworm enzymes. In England, not long after Darwin's
time, a brilliant embryologist at the University of Edinburgh,
John Beard, PhD, first suggested the use of pancreatic enzymes as a treatment
for cancer. He even wrote a book in 1911 called The Enzyme Treatment of Cancer
and its Scientific Basis. He got little for his pains but trouble at the hands
of a furious medical profession. Today his work is all but forgotten.
In the US
in the 1950s and 60s, a doctor named Frank. L. Shively, MD, of Dayton, Ohio
used a similar approach. He reported excellent results in human patients using
injected enzymes. When he tried to convince his colleagues of the efficacy of
this treatment he was stymied. Being unable to find a regular publisher, Shively self-published a
long typewritten manuscript on this approach, The Multiple Proteolytic Enzyme
Therapy of Cancer, with documentation of many successes. He was scorned by most
of his medical colleagues. Today he is almost completely unknown and copies of
his manuscript are very rare. (I have one of the few existing copies.)
In Germany,
where natural treatments are widely accepted by the medical profession, the use
of enzymes has been more favorably regarded. Much of this goes back to the
post-World War II-era work of Max Wolf, MD, and his disciple, Karl Ransberger,
PhD, who together wrote the classic book, Enzyme Therapy. Together, they
founded Mucos Pharma to market enzyme products, such as the celebrated
Wobenzyme. A visit to the bookstore at the annual "Medicine Week"
(Medezinische Woche) meeting in Baden-Baden
reveals numerous titles in German on the same topic. Almost every European
clinic that I have visited enthusiastically embraces some form of enzyme
therapy.
Yet the use of digestive enzymes remains almost completely unknown to most
conventional oncologists in the US.
For instance, during the past eleven years (1994-2004) there have been tens of
thousands of presentations on a wide variety of other topics at the annual
meetings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). Yet in that time
there has not been a single study on the topic presented at ASCO, according to
that organizationis's website (www.asco.org).
Failure of the War on Cancer
According to Clifton Leaf, executive editor of Fortune magazine,
since 1971 America has
spent $200 billion on the war on cancer--with precious little to show
for it.
This recent analysis, from inside the mainstream media, reiterates what
many
critics, myself included, have said since the war began. There is an
urgent
need for the oncology profession to take a more serious look at the
best CAM treatments. (For Clifton Leaf's article on why we are
losing the war on cancer, go to
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,
15114,598425,00.html)
Of this massive sum, only $1.4 million has been spent on the Gonzalez trial
and it took a considerable political struggle to get even that single grant
approved. The Gonzalez trial moves at a snail's pace for lack of cooperation on
the part of conventional oncologists. Every attempt to expose this imbalance in
research priorities is met with defensiveness on the part of the cancer
establishment. This serves to further isolate proponents of innovative methods,
such as enzymes, from the scientific mainstream. In other words, huge sums are
poured into dead-end pharmacological solutions, while potential alternatives
for cancer are dismissed out of hand as "unproven methods."
It is an intolerable situation. But rest assured, one of these days the worm
is going to turn.
Bibliography
Beard, J. The Enzyme Treatment of Cancer and its Scientific Basis. London: Chatto &
Windus, 1911.
Chowka, Peter. Nicholas Gonzalez, MD: Two years into an unprecedented study
of nutrition and cancer, the truth is still out there. Feb. 15, 2002. Retrieved
September 1, 2004 from: http://members.aol.com/pbchowka/
Darwin, Charles. The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms (1881). Available
from: http://charles-darwin.classicliterature.co.uk/formation-of-vegetable-mould/
Green, S. Nicholas Gonzalez treatment for cancer: Gland extracts, coffee
enemas, vitamin megadoses, and diets. Sci Rev Altern Med 1998;2:25-30.
Hwang CM, Kim DI, Huh SH, et al. In vivo evaluation of lumbrokinase, a
fibrinolytic enzyme extracted from Lumbricus rubellus, in a prosthetic vascular
graft. J Cardiovasc Surg (Torino).
2002;43:891-894.
Jin L, Jin H, Zhang G, Xu G. Changes in coagulation and tissue plasminogen
activator after the treatment of cerebral infarction with lumbrokinase. Clin
Hemorheol Microcirc. 2000;23:213-8.
Mihara H, Maruyama M, Sumi H. Novel thrombolytic therapy discovered from
traditional Oriental medicine using the earthworm. SE Asian J Trop Med Public
Health. 1992;23 Suppl 2: 131-40.
Rothman S, Liebow C, Isenman L. Conservation of digestive enzymes. Physiol
Rev. 2002;82:1-18. Review.
Sakalova A, Kunze R, Holomanova D, Hapalova J, Chorvath B, Mistrik M, Sedlak
J. [Density of adhesive proteins after oral administration of proteolytic
enzymes in multiple myeloma] Vnitr Lek. 1995;41:822-6.
Saruc M, Standop S, Standop J, et al. Pancreatic enzyme extract improves
survival in murine pancreatic cancer. Pancreas. 2004;28:401-12.
Shively,
Franklin H. Multiple Proteolytic Enzyme Therapy for Cancer. Administered by
Intravenous Infusions. Dayton,
OH: Johnson-Watson Printing and
Bookbinding Co., 1969.
By Ralph W. Moss, PhD, Director, The
Moss Reports
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