The chemical turned up in a massive screening programme funded by the US National Cancer Institute, which tested 2500 plant extracts for toxicity to laboratory
cultures of human cancer cells.
Using a
combination of human cancer cells and mouse models of disease, the authors examined the pathway by which squalene epoxidase promotes the development of hepatocellular carcinoma and identified terbinafine, a clinically approved antifungal drug, as a potential intervention.
In the August 10 issue of Cancer Cell, American researchers show that the drug candidate inhibits tumor growth in a mouse model of breast cancer and efficiently kills a broad
range of human cancer cells.
NCI's efforts to develop new laboratory models of human cancer includes vastly increasing the
number of human cancer cell lines (grown as two - dimensional and three - dimensional cultures) and patient - derived tumor xenografts.
Inhibition of growth, production of insulin - like growth factor - II (IGFII), and expression of IGF - II
mRNA of human cancer cell lines by antagonistic analogs of growth hormone - releasing hormone in vitro.
Molecular analysis showed that there is a gene that becomes active in tumour tissue and prevents the programmed cell death, similar to the
growth of human cancer cells.
Tuschl had identified 14 microRNAs from fruit fly embryos and 19 from a line
of human cancer cells.
In an in vitro study, vanillin induced apoptosis and arrested the cell cycle of human colorectal cancer cells, and some researchers think vanillin could reduce the metastatic potential (ability to spread to other parts of the body)
of human cancer cells in vivo, too.
It is interesting to note that through a test tube study, potent onion extract proved to destroy 95 %
of human cancer cells, while extract from a sweet onion only killed 10 %!