Cancer
Daisies lead scientists down path to new leukemia drug
By David Liu
Oct 2, 2007 - 7:10:43 PM

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TUESDAY October 02 (Foodconsumer.org) -- A new compound isolated from a daisy-like plant that has shown effective in treating leukemia in laboratory mice and dogs is planned for human clinical trials, University of Rochester researchers reported in the journal, Blood.

Leukemia, which is diagnosed in 44,000 men and women in the U.S. and kills 22,000 each year, is hard to cure because the current treatments cannot have any inhibitory effect on stem cells that are responsible for the diseases.

Craig T. Jordan, Ph.D., senior author, director of Translational Research for Hematologic Malignancies at the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center said they have been studying this promising compound for nearly five years.

The clinical trials are expected to get started in England by the end of 2007. Initially, a dozen of adult volunteers who have been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or other types of blood or lymph cancers will be enrolled, Jordan said.

In contrast to the standard treatments which aim to kill the dividing cells, dimethylamino-parthenolide (DMAPT) isolated from a daisy-like plant known as feverfew or bachelor’s button is believed to strike leukemia at its stem-cell level killing both the dormant cancerous stem cells and dividing cancer cells while leaving the healthy cells untouched Early animal studies showed the potential.

This compound seems to kill the cancer cells by boosting the reactive oxygen species in cancer cells to a level that cancer cells get killed, said Monica L. Guzman, Ph.D., the lead researcher on the DMAPT project and a senior instructor at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

According to the authors, DMAPT may also be used to treat breast and prostate cancer, melanoma, and multiple myeloma, although those studies have been conducted only in cell cultures to date.