Green Tea Extract Shows Potential for Treating Cancer

A compound found in green tea could become a powerful arsenal in treatments for tackling cancer, according to newly published research. The compound, known as epigallocatechin gallate, has been known to have preventative anticancer characteristics but fails to reach tumors when delivered by traditional intravenous (IV) administration.

However, in early laboratory tests at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, Scotland, UK) and the University of Glasgow, researchers employed a strategy that allowed the treatment to be delivered specifically to the tumors after IV administration. Almost two-thirds of the tumors it was delivered to either shrank or disappeared within one month and the treatment displayed no side effects to normal tissues. The tests are believed to be the first time that this type of treatment has made cancerous tumors shrink or disappear.

In the study, on two different types of skin cancer, 40% of both types of tumor vanished, while 30% of one and 20% of another shrank. An additional 10% of one of the types was stabilized. The researchers encapsulated the green tea extract in vesicles that also transported transferrin, a plasma protein that transports iron through the blood. Receptors for transferrin are found in large amounts in many tumors.

Dr. Christine Dufès, a senior lecturer at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, led the research. “These are very encouraging results which we hope could pave the way for new and effective cancer treatments. When we used our method, the green tea extract reduced the size of many of the tumors every day, in some cases removing them altogether. By contrast, the extract had no effect at all when it was delivered by other means, as every one of these tumors continued to grow. This research could open doors to new treatments for what is still one of the biggest killer diseases in many countries,” she emphasized.

The study’s findings were posted online August 14, 2012, in the journal Nanomedicine.

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University of Strathclyde
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