We all know that eating plenty of green vegetables may help to prevent cancer. Now US researchers at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station claim that derivatives of a compound found naturally in vegetables could be used in cancer treatments.

Steve Safe and his team 'took advantage of a natural chemical that research has shown will prevent cancer [diindolylmethane, DIM], and developed several more analogues', in the hope of finding a cancer treatment.

The researchers studied how the DIM derivatives block cancer growth and found them to target PPAR gamma, a protein that is highly active in fat cells and over-expressed in many tumours and cancer cells.

The team modified DIM isolated from broccoli to give a series of compounds which target PPAR gamma and which could be potential cancer treatments. The researchers claim that the compounds inhibited cancer cell growth in cell cultures and in mice. 'One of the best parts is that this treatment appears to have minimal or no side effects in the mice trials; it just stops growth. The hope now is that the patented chemicals can be developed into useful drugs for clinical trials and then be used for cancer treatment,' notes Safe.

According to Safe, a US company called Plantacor is now sponsoring toxicology studies with collaborators at MD Anderson, before going on to do trials on human patients. 

ED