Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter
An ancient Chinese remedy for gastrointestinal problems may spare cancer patients the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy drugs, and boost the effectiveness of treatment, new research suggests.
The 1800 year-old recipe, called Huang Qin Tang, consists of a mix of flowers from the Chinese skullcap plant, extract of peonies, liquorice, and the fruit of the buckthorn tree.
The remedy has been used for years to treat stomach upsets and nausea. Now, researchers at start-up pharmaceutical company PhytoCeutica and Yale University School of Medicine, both in Connecticut, have shown that the blend can also aid cancer treatment, reducing diarrhoea and gut damage caused by chemotherapy in colon and rectal cancer patients.
To find out why the remedy worked, the researchers gave a dose of the herbal cocktail, called PHY906, with irinotecan - a chemotherapy drug - to mice with colon cancer, and found that it could restore gut cells which normally die off in response to irinotecan alone.
The mice given PHY906 experienced less toxicity, lost less weight and showed more anti-tumour activity than controls that were given irinotecan alone. PHY906 also encouraged the growth of new intestinal stem cells and prevented inflammation.
In an interview with Medical News Today, Yung-Chi Cheng, a pharmacologist at Yale and head scientific adviser to PhytoCeutica, said:
This combination of chemotherapy and herbs represents a marriage of Western and Eastern approaches to the treatment of cancer
He adds that:
Chemotherapy causes great distress for millions of patients, but PHY906 has multiple biologically active compounds which can act on multiple sources of discomfort
The results of how PHY906 might repair chemotherapy-damaged guts were published this week in Science Translational Medicine. Irinotecan blocks the action of an enzyme involved in DNA replication, causing gut cells to die off. In the mice that were given PHY906 with irinotecan, the team found upregulation of genes in the Wnt pathway, which encourages cells in the gut to divide.
The extra effects of how PHY906 decreases inflammation are as yet unknown. However, the researchers say that it is likely to involve down-regulation of genes linked to inflammation.
In an interview with NatureNews, Cheng says that he hopes to get phase II and III trials going in the United States and Europe soon.
In an accompanying editorial, Cathy Eng, at the University of Texas in Houston, warns there is a long way to go before the drug can be used in humans:
When considering complementary and alternative medicine use in the treatment of cancer patients, one must take into account reproducibility of preclinical findings in clinical practice, quality assurance of herbal products, and potential toxicities associated with alternative therapies
Good science - but how about doing reseach to prove that Chinese medicine in the form of powdered Rhino horn DOES NOT have any aphrodisiac value or anticancer value, and that this is just a myth.
This year alone about 200 rhinos have been killed by poachers for their horns in South Africa alone (where their protection is fairly good). As China economically "colonizes" Africa for our resources, organised crime and poaching is growing fast to satisfy the demand in endangered species by Chinese medicine. Can we not "save the Rhino" by doing active reseach to prove that their horns DO NOT have any medicial value? Surely the WWF would fund that reseach and try to stop the slaughter with hard facts to counteract the myths. Hurry - we have few Rhinos left!!!