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According to a study published in the journal Life Sciences, one herb used in Chinese medicine was able to kill up to 98% of breast cancer cells in less than 16 hours.
Using the plant alone led to a 28% reduction in breast cancer. However, when combined with iron, the result was an astonishing 98%.
And what’s more, healthy cells were not affected by this experimental therapy.
How artemisinin can neutralize cancer
Artemisinin, also known as sweet wormwood (English: sweet Wormwood, Latin: artemisia annua), was used as a powerful herb against malaria.
Today it has been confirmed to be an excellent fighter against cancer.
Subjects in the study were given supplemental iron, which typically accumulates in breast tissues, especially in local cancer cells.
Artemisinin was then able to selectively target the bad cells while leaving the good ones alone.
The study states:
“After more detailed examination we found that artemisinin disrupted the expression of the transcription factor E2F1, which ensures the cell cycle in human breast cancer cells. It also represents a critical transcriptional pathway through which artemisinin controls the proliferative growth of cancer cells.”
Iron accumulates in cancer cells thanks to special receptors that aid cell division.
Healthy cells probably have these receptors too, but they occur in much greater numbers in cancerous cells. Therefore they can be targeted using a combination of iron and artemisinin.
It’s as if the cancer cell received a double hit.
Similarities with malaria treatment
Many experiments have confirmed that the extract of this herb in the presence of iron can effectively kill cancer.
The same extract has been used in China for thousands of years to treat malaria.
The malaria parasite cannot survive in the presence of artemisinin because it is rich in iron. It is also remarkable that this therapy works just as well against cancer.
Bioengineers Henry Lai and Narendra Singh from Washington University were the scientists who first made this groundbreaking discovery.
As they say, it is further evidence that natural plants can indeed induce apoptosis (programmed death) in cancer cells.
Will this new discovery be available to the public?
For many years it has been relatively difficult to obtain extract of wormwood (artemisinin) at a reasonable price. Today, however, everything in the biotechnology industry is already in place for its mass production.
Is it really possible to expect positive news from this field?
Jack Newman, chief scientist working for the California biotechnology company Amyris, answers this question as follows:
“It is primarily instability and fluctuations that make the supply chain of this life-saving drug extremely complicated. When we first started on this, we gave it a 1:1000 chance of working.”
The French pharmaceutical company Sanofi plans to supply 50 to 60 tons of artemisinin to the market each year. According to them, that should be enough to cover global demand.
