Avocados are a popular and delicious snack, and new research suggests they could help fight cancer.
A lipid present in avocados could combat acute myeloid leukemia (AML) by targeting the disease's stem cells, the University of Waterloo reported.
"The stem cell is really the cell that drives the disease," said Professor Spagnuolo, in Waterloo's School of Pharmacy. "The stem cell is largely responsible for the disease developing and it's the reason why so many patients with leukemia relapse. We've performed many rounds of testing to determine how this new drug works at a molecular level and confirmed that it targets stem cells selectively, leaving healthy cells unharmed."
While the drug is still years away from approval for use in oncology clinics, the researchers are already preparing for Phase I clinical trials in which people diagnosed with AML could have access to it. The treatment, dubbed Avocatin B, is just one of several compounds Spagnuolo and his team have uncovered as potential treatments for disease. The team focuses of food-derived compounds called nutraceuticals.
"Extracts are less refined. The contents of an extract can vary from plant to plant and year to year, depending on lots of factors - on the soil, the location, the amount of sunlight, the rain," Spagnuolo said. "Evaluating a nutraceutical as a potential clinical drug requires in-depth evaluation at the molecular level. This approach provides a clearer understanding of how the nutraceutical works, and it means we can reproduce the effects more accurately and consistently. This is critical to safely translating our lab work into a reliable drug that could be used in oncology clinics."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Cancer Research.
