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Artemisinin from wormwood and pure oxygen
killed cancer cells in a UW lab study |
Adding pure oxygen boosts effectiveness of natural
compound artemisinin for killing cancer cells
University of Washington researchers studied the compound artemisinin
that comes from wormwood, finding adding pure oxygen boosted the ability of
artemisinin to kill cancer cells. Scientists have been exploring the
anti-cancer potential of the wormwood compound since the 1990’s.
In new research, when the scientists combined pure oxygen
with artemisinin, the growth of leukemia cells in the lab was reduced by 38
percent, boosting the effect of the wormwood compound 50 percent.
Oxygen alone stopped cancer cell growth by fifteen percent,
but the researchers say using high-pressure oxygen at three-and-a-half times
normal air pressure made
the compound even more potent.
“If you combine high-pressure oxygen with artemisinin you
can get a much better curing effect,” said author Henry Lai, a UW research
professor of bioengineering. “We only
measured up to 48 hours. Over longer time periods we expect the synergistic
effects to be even more dramatic.”
The findings, reported in the journal Anticancer Research, suggest a new target
for cancer treatment from the natural compound. The study authors note
artemisinin is inexpensive, non-injectable, and according
to Dr. Lai, “It’s 100 times more specific than traditional chemotherapy.”
For the study, Lai place a Petri dish with cancer cells in a
hyperbaric chamber for 48 hours that Washington State University Professor and
co-author Raymond Quock has
been using to study the effect of pressurized oxygen on pain.
Lai and University of Washington colleagues developed and
licensed variant of artemisinin that is 1000 times more potent than the natural
compound in 2004.
For clinical studies, Lai says people or animals could lie
in hyperbaric oxygen chambers to boost the effect of artemisinin for treating
cancer. He says he has suspected oxygen could enhance the effect of the
wormwood compound since 2010 because it promotes the formation of free
radicals.
The researchers are conducting clinical trials
on dogs with lymphoma using synthetic artemisinin compounds. They are also planting
crops of artemesia to be developed as a cancer therapy and to see if it can
control parasites in poultry.
Cancer cells need iron to form new DNA, grow and metastasize
and artemisinin reacts with iron to form free radical compounds, making cancer
cells unstable. It is also used as an anti-malarial in Asia and Africa.
The natural compound artemisinin is known to kill cancer
cells. In the new study from University of Washington Researchers, the
combination of pure oxygen and the wormwood compound destroyed leukemia cells.
Dr. Lai says the combination effect in the lab was even more pronounced for breast
cancer cells.
Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons
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