More than 40 plant-based compounds can turn on genes that slow the
spread of cancer, according to a first-of-its-kind study by a Washington
State University researcher.
Gary Meadows, WSU professor and associate dean for graduate education
and scholarship in the College of Pharmacy, says he is encouraged by
his findings because the spread of cancer is most often what makes the
disease fatal. Moreover, says Meadows, diet, nutrients and plant-based
chemicals appear to be opening many avenues of attack.
“We’re always looking for a magic bullet,” he says. “Well, there are
lots of magic bullets out there in what we eat and associated with our
lifestyle. We just need to take advantage of those. And they can work
together.”
Meadows started the study, recently published online in the journal Cancer and Metastasis Reviews,
with some simple logic: Most research focuses on the prevention of
cancer or the treatment of the original cancer tumor, but it’s usually
the cancer’s spread to nearby organs that kills you. So rather than
attack the tumor, said Meadows, let’s control its spread, or metastasis.
He focused in particular on genes that suppress metastasis. As search
engine terms go, it took him down many a wormhole in the PubMed
research database, as the concept of nutrients and metastasis suppressor
genes is rarely identified by journals. It’s even an afterthought of
some of the researchers who find the genes.
“People for the most part did not set out in their research goals to
study metastasis suppressor genes,” says Meadows. “It was just a gene
that was among many other genes that they had looked at in their study.”
But Meadows took the studies and looked to see when metastasis
suppressor genes were on or off, even if original authors didn’t make
the connection. In the end, he documented dozens of substances affecting
the metastasis suppressor genes of numerous cancers.
He saw substances like amino acids, vitamin D, ethanol, ginseng
extract, the tomato carotenoid lycopene, the turmeric component
curcumin, pomegranate juice, fish oil and others affecting gene
expression in breast, colorectal, prostate, skin, lung and other
cancers.
Typically, the substances acted epigenetically, which is to say they turned metastasis suppressor genes on or off.
“So these epigenetic mechanisms are influenced by what you eat,” he
says. “That may also be related to how the metastasis suppressor genes
are being regulated. That’s a very new area of research that has largely
not been very well explored in terms of diet and nutrition.” Meadows
says his study reinforces two concepts.
For one, he has a greater appreciation of the role of natural
compounds in helping our bodies slow or stop the spread of cancer. The
number of studies connecting nutrients and metastasis suppressor genes
by accident suggests a need for more deliberate research into the genes.
“And many of these effects have not been followed up on,” he says.
“There’s likely to be more compounds out there, more constituents, that
people haven’t even evaluated yet.”
Meadows also sees these studies playing an important role in the
shift from preventing cancer to living with it and keeping it from
spreading.
“We’ve kind of focused on the cancer for a long time,” he says. “More
recently we’ve started to focus on the cancer in its environment. And
the environment, your whole body as an environment, is really important
in whether or not that cancer will spread.”
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