Cancer drug bears fruit

A study led by researchers at King’s College Hospital and the University of Southampton suggests that wild chokeberry may be used to strengthen the effectiveness of the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine - which is commonly used to treat pancreatic cancer.

A full account of the study has been published in the Journal of Clinical Pathology.

According to researchers, adding ’nutraceuticals’ to a patient’s chemotherapy cycle may enhance the treatment of harder to treat cancers. However, the research team admit they are unsure exactly how the chokeberry extract improves the drug’s effectiveness.

“This could change the way we deal with hard to treat cancers in the future

Bashir Lwaleed

Chokeberry, which is high in vitamins and antioxidants, consists of various polyphenols that are thought to help clean up the harmful by-products of normal cell activity.

“We know that [chokeberry does not improve a drug’s effectiveness] through preventing new blood vessel formation (anti-angiogenesis) - a process that is important in cancer cell growth,” the research team said.

“It is, however, pro-apoptotic and it may be an aspect of this property that is responsible. Further research is needed to establish the mechanisms of synergy.”

To perform the study, researchers used AsPC-1 pancreatic cancer cells and assessed how well they grew when treated with either the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine, different levels of commercially available chokeberry extract alone, and when treated with a combination of gemcitabine and chokeberry extract.

The analysis indicated that 48 hours of chokeberry extract treatment of pancreatic cancer cells induced cell death at 1 ug/ml.

Bashir Lwaleed, at the University of Southampton, said: “These are very exciting results. The low doses of the extract greatly boosted the effectiveness of gemcitabine, when the two were combined. In addition, we found that lower doses of the conventional drug were needed, suggesting either that the compounds work together synergistically, or that the extract exerts a ’supra-additive’ effect.

“This could change the way we deal with hard to treat cancers in the future.”

At this stage of the research, however, it is too early to begin synthesising chokeberry extract as a means of producing commercially available medicines.

The research team has said that more clinical trials are needed to explore the potential of naturally occurring micronutrients in plants, such as those found in chokeberry.