Using Chinese Mint to make Anti-Cancer drugs

  It’s been used as an anti-toxin in traditional Chinese medicine since the days of the Yellow Emperor in the Han dynasty, over two thousand years ago, but now Scutellaria barbata, a Chinese relative of common garden mint, is being refined into drugs that are effective against over 90% of cancerous tumours.

By extracting and refining active ingredients of the herb, Researchers at the University of Salford’s Kidscan Laboratories have developed a range of drugs that combat cancer in a completely new way.

While drugs currently used in Chemotherapy target cancerous tumours themselves, and generally have to be used in strengths that have damaging side effects, the drugs being developed and tested at Salford, work by targeting the blood vessels that surround tumours, cutting off the flow of oxygen and nutrients to the tumour and literally starving it to death.

Because a tumour calls on surrounding cells to grow rapidly to feed it, the cells and blood vessels surrounding the tumour do not have the inherent strength and coherence of other cells, and these drugs cause them to change shape, making them incapable of carrying blood, clogging blood vessels and cutting off supplies to the tumour.  

While cancers can develop resistance to existing drugs, requiring higher doses and becoming less effective over time, it is thought that this new range, because it only impacts on weaker cells surrounding the tumour, will not encounter resistance in the same way.  
Because they work on a micro-vascular level the drugs also have applications in other illnesses like Endometriosis and Diabetes where blood vessels grow rapidly.

Now new funding by the “Kidscan” charity will allow Dr Sylvie Ducki and her research team to develop these drugs for clinical trials in about a year’s time,  ensuring they have no toxic side effects, of which there is so far no sign.

This Chinese relative of mint offers the potential for a range of gentler, more “natural” drugs, and the prospect of less toxic cancer treatments, particularly suitable for the treatment of young children.

Once again it would seem that by looking to history and to nature, we can find more natural ways to treat illnesses, one reason why the interest in traditional Chinese medicine has prompted a growth of over 20% each year in the last three years in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry. 

Interviewees
-Dr Sylvie Ducki, Lecturer in Medicinal Chemistry, University of Salford
-Professor Alan McGown, Chair of Drug Design and Director of Kidscan University of Salford