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Ancient
complementary
medicine put through its paces for pancreatic cancer
The bark of the Amur cork tree
(Phellodendron amurense) has traveled a centuries-long
road with the healing arts. Now it is being put through
its paces by science in the fight against pancreatic
cancer, with the potential to make inroads against
several more.
UT Health Science Center researcher A. Pratap Kumar was
already exploring the cork tree extract's promise in
treating prostate cancer when his team found that deadly
pancreatic cancers share some similar development
pathways with prostate tumors.
The researchers show that the extract blocks those
pathways and inhibits the scarring that thwarts
anti-cancer drugs. Dr. Jingjing Gong, currently pursuing
post-doctoral studies at Yale University, conducted the
study as a graduate student in Dr Kumar's laboratory in
the Department of Pharmacology.
"Fibrosis is a process of uncontrolled scarring around
the tumor gland," said Dr. Kumar, a professor of urology
in the School of Medicine at the Health Science Center
and the study's principal investigator. "Once you have
fibrotic tissue, the drugs cannot get into the cancer."
Liver and kidney tumors also develop fibrosis and the
resulting resistance to drugs, he said, and there are no
drugs currently targeting that pathway in those
cancers.
The two pathways, or proteins, that contribute to
fibrosis in those tumors also encourage Cox-2, an enzyme
that causes inflammation, and the cork tree extract
appears to suppress that as well, Dr. Kumar said. The
complex interrelationship of these substances is "the
million-dollar question," he said, and solving that
question is one of the next steps in his research.
The potential of natural substances to treat and cure
disease has great appeal, but the advantage of cork tree
extract, available as a dietary supplement in capsule
form, is that it already has been established as safe
for use in patients. In a promising prostate cancer
clinical study of 24 patients that Dr. Kumar helped
spearhead, all the patients tolerated the treatment
well, he said. Now researchers are analyzing the
results, he said, and with more funding they plan to
expand the study to a much larger group of patients.
University of Texas Health Science Center
at San Antonio. Clinical Cancer Research.
032014
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