Milk thistle stops lung cancer in mice

Tissue with wound-like conditions allows tumors to grow and spread. In mouse lung cancer cells, treatment with silibinin, a major component of milk thistle, removed the molecular billboards that signal these wound-like conditions and so stopped the spread of these lung cancers, according to a recent study published in the journal Molecular Carcinogenesis.

Though the natural extract has been used for more than 2,000 years, mostly to treat disorders of the liver and gallbladder, this is one of the first carefully controlled and reported studies to find benefit.

Basically, in a cell there can be a chain of signals, one leading to the next, to the next, and eventually to an end product. And so if you would like to eliminate an end product, you may look to break a link in the signaling chain that leads to it. The end products COX2 and iNOS are enzymes involved with the inflammatory response to perceived wounds – both can aid tumor growth. Far upstream in the signaling chain that leads to these unwanted enzymes are STAT1 and STAT3. These transcription factors allow the blueprint of DNA to bind with proteins that continue the signal cascade, eventually leading to the production of harmful COX2 and iNOS.

Stop STAT1 and STAT3 and you break the chain that leads to COX2 and iNOS – and the growth of lung tumors along with them.

Perhaps you want to contact the author directly:

Milk thistle extract controls lung cancer in mice Highlighted study from University of Colorado Cancer Center 2/15/2011

http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/MilkThistle.aspx

Aurora, Colo. (Feb. 15, 2011)— Silibinin, a milk thistle extract, decreases tumor size in mice by inhibiting production of an enzyme that is overexpressed in certain types cancer, researchers at the University of Colorado Cancer Center have found.

The study will be the featured highlight in the Feb. 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research, a prestigious cancer journal. Rajesh Agarwal, PhD, professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy and co-leader of the CU Cancer Center’s cancer prevention & control program, led the study.

Agarwal’s team specializes in the chemopreventive benefits of silibinin and other nutraceuticals. In this study, the team found that silibinin could reduce the size and number of lung tumors in mice by inhibiting inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS). This enzyme produces nitric oxide, which is a free radical that can lead to the development of lung cancer.

“In our ongoing studies, we want to understand the sources of nitric oxide generation by focusing on lung tumor microenvironment and how silibinin affects that,” Agarwal says. “We are trying to reach down earlier in the cancer development to reach real chemoprevention.”

Silibinin reduced tumor size by 72 percent after 12 weeks of treatment in mice with tumors that contained iNOS. In mice whose lung cancer did not express iNOS, silibinin had no effect.

“The results support targeting iNOS with silibinin for controlling lung cancer,” Agarwal says.

The study also showed the benefit of using micro-CT to optimize treatment. Unlike MRI, which does not produce images clear enough to measure tumor size, micro-CT images “clearly distinguished lung tumors from surrounding tissue even without any contrast agent, and the reconstructed 3D pulmonary images easily differentiated tumors from blood vessels,” according to the study.

“This is a very powerful, real-time technique to measure the effectiveness of cancer treatment in a non-invasive manner,” Agarwal says. (Excerpted)

Learn more at www.coloradocancercenter.org. Contact: Lynn Clark, 303-724-3160, lynn.clark@ucdenver.edu

For the liver Milk Thistle with Dandelion is great, but a combo that is far less well-known but works more than 2x as well is Schizandra with Bupleurum —make a hot, tall tea with with those herbs, and drink 2x daily for a couple months.

Your liver will be cleaned out and any efforts @ weight loss will be much more productive. Your complexion will also be cleared of about 80% of all blemishes that were there.

It’s pretty impressive.

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