Are Dandelions A Natural Anti-Cancer Agent? Researchers Win Grant Money To Investigate
July 31st, 2013Via: Medical Daily:
In a study published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Pandey explores a treatment of melanoma skin cancer made from a potent extract of dandelion root.
Melanoma skin cancer, which has become one of the leading cancer among adults ages 25 to 29 in North America, is oddly resistant to chemotherapy. Treatment, then, is limited to surgical excision of the primary tumor site followed by immunotherapy and mostly ineffective chemotherapy for metastasized melanoma. Not only do standard treatments often prove to be inadequate, but patients suffer harsh side effects, seemingly for nothing.
To meet the challenge of finding an effective and alternative therapy, Pandey and his colleagues recently investigated the effect of dandelion root extract (DRE) on human melanoma cell lines in vitro. Specifically, they prepared extracts of dandelion root using a variety of techniques, including filtration, lyophilization, constitution, and sterilization. After they prepared the DRE, they treated in vitro cells (A375 and G361 human melanoma cells, along with normal human fibroblasts — a common cell within the connective tissue) with the DRE, experimenting with different specific concentrations and time points.
What did they find?
The extract they had created targets the mitochondria, the site of cellular respiration, and generates reactive oxygen species, molecules which damage the cell. Although it is unclear which components of the DRE were active when successfully destroying the human melanoma cells, it clearly acted as a “natural chemotherapeutic agent that may be extended to other chemo-resistant cancer lines,” write the authors.
Not surprising many would say, as a wide variety of cultures have long asserted the healing possibilities of dandelions or as they are known in Latin, Taraxacum officinale.
I contracted malignant melanoma at the age of 27 at a mole caused by a childhood sunburn. It was excised with 5 years of follow up tests, but no further treatment.
It metastasized to the lymph glands 7 years later (discovered by myself). Lymphectomy performed 5 days after that, then a year and a couple of months of Biological Modification Therapy. This is the Canadian medical system I’m discussing, but to my knowledge this is the SOP for metastasized melanoma to this day–no chemo, no immunotherapy, instead BMT.
Biological Modification Therapy consists of Interferon injections. Interferon, of course, already exists in the human body. If it had been a chemical toxin, I don’t know if I would have accepted the regime. Efficacy I was told at the time was that it increased 5 year survival rates from about 20 in 100 to about 30 in 100 people.
I am 13 years cancer free now as of July 26.