Chinese folk medicine has produced a promising new approach in the treatment of cancer. Seattle researchers have shown that a compound from a wormwood plant extract searches and eliminates breast cancer cells and leave the healthy cells unharmed. Artemisia is a safe, non-toxic, and inexpensive alternative closely related to oxygen therapy. Its key to success is peroxide linkage within the active molecule of the herb.
University of Washington bioengineering researcher, Henry Lai, M.D. noted that in laboratory experiments the compound virtually destroyed all human cancer cells upon exposure to it in the test tube within 16 hours and left alive all the normal cells. Artemisin is extracted by Chinese folk healers from the wormwood plant (Artemisia annua L.). For thousands of years, it has been used as a treatment for malaria.
Scientist began to study artemisin’s anti-malarial qualities and this also led to it being tested as an anticancer agent. They found that a shared characteristic of dividing cancer cells and of the malaria parasite is high concentrations of iron.
When it comes into contact with iron, artemisinin chemically reacts with the iron, creating charged atoms chemists refer to as free radicals. The free radicals in malaria kill the single-cell parasite by binding with cell membranes and then breaking them apart, attacking them and then, eventually kill them. When they divide, the malaria cells need iron to replicate DNA. Iron concentrations in cancer cells are much higher than in malaria cells. Cancer is marked by cell division gone awry.
On their surface, cancer cells have a lot more transferrin receptors. These receptors are the cellular pathways in which iron enters. Dr Lai says that breast cancer cells posses five to fifteen times more transferrin receptors on their surface than normal breast cells. To selectively destroy the cancer cells, Dr. Lai’s strategy was to pump up cancer cells with even more iron and then introduce artemisinin.
Lai used a compound known as holotransferrin on both the breast cancer cells and normal breast cells. Holotransferrin is a water-soluble form of artemisinin. After eight hours, Lai observed that 75% of the cancer cells were completely killed. After 16 hours, almost all of them were destroyed.
Cynthia Chamberlain is a licensed acupuncturist in Overland Park, KS, and the founder and clinical director of Eastern Healing Solutions, LLC.
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