Ginger
causes Ovarian cancer cells to die
Newswise — Ginger is known to ease
nausea and control inflammation. But researchers at the University
of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center are investigating a new use
for this age-old remedy: treating ovarian cancer.
In laboratory studies, researchers
found ginger caused ovarian cancer cells to die. Further, the way in
which the cells died suggests ginger may avoid the problem common in
ovarian cancer of cells becoming resistant to standard treatments.
The researchers are
presenting their results in a poster session at the American
Association for Cancer Research annual meeting.
Researchers used ginger powder,
similar to what is sold at grocery stores, only a standardized
research grade. The ginger powder was dissolved in solution and
applied to ovarian cancer cell cultures. Ginger induced cell death
in all the ovarian cancer cell lines tested.
Moreover, the researchers found
that ginger caused two types of cell death. One type, known as
apoptosis, results from cancer cells essentially committing suicide.
The other type of cell death, called autophagy, results from cells
digesting or attacking themselves.
“Most ovarian cancer patients
develop recurrent disease that eventually becomes resistant to
standard chemotherapy – which is associated with resistance to
apoptosis. If ginger can cause autophagic cell death in addition to
apoptosis, it may circumvent resistance to conventional
chemotherapy,” says study author J. Rebecca Liu, M.D., assistant
professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the U-M Medical School and
a member of the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Study results are very
preliminary, and researchers plan to test whether they can obtain
similar results in animal studies. The appeal of ginger as a
potential treatment for ovarian cancer is that it would have
virtually no side effects and would be easy to administer as a
capsule.
Ginger is effective at controlling
inflammation, and inflammation contributes to the development of
ovarian cancer cells. By halting the inflammatory reaction, the
researchers suspect, ginger also stops cancer cells from growing.
“In multiple ovarian cancer cell
lines, we found that ginger induced cell death at a similar or
better rate than the platinum-based chemotherapy drugs typically
used to treat ovarian cancer,” says Jennifer Rhode, M.D., a
gynecologic oncology fellow at the U-M Medical School.
Liu’s lab is also looking at the
effects on ovarian cancer of resveratrol, a substance found in red
wine, and curcumin, the active ingredient in the curry spice
turmeric. In addition, researchers at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer
Center are investigating ginger to control nausea from chemotherapy
and ginger to prevent colon cancer.
“Patients are using natural
products either in place of or in conjunction with chemotherapy, and
we don’t know if they work or how they work. We don’t know how these
products interact with chemotherapy or other cancer treatments.
There’s no good clinical data,” Liu says.
More than 20,000 women are
expected to be diagnosed with ovarian cancer this year, and 15,000
will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.
For information about ovarian cancer, go to www.cancer.med.umich.edu/learn/ovarianinfo.htm
or call the U-M Cancer AnswerLine at 800-865-1125.
In addition to Rhode and Liu,
study authors are undergraduate student Jennifer Huang, research
associates Sarah Fogoros and Lijun Tan, and Suzanna Zick, N.D.,
M.P.H., research investigator in family medicine.
Funding for the study was from the
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National
Institutes of Health.
Reference: American Association
for Cancer Research 97th annual meeting, April 1-5, 2006,
Washington, D.C.