|
"These results strongly suggest that
ginger compounds may be effective chemopreventive and/or
chemotherapeutic agents for colorectal carcinomas," said Bode.
Because mice were not allowed to live with tumors bigger than
one cubic centimeter, "it's difficult to know if the
ginger-treated mice would have lived longer if left to die of
their tumors, but it looks that way," she said.
Preliminary results also suggested that
tumors in the control mice had spread, or metastasized,
more than tumors in the [6]-gingerol mice, but whether a
significant difference actually exists remains to be verified,
Bode said.
In these experiments, mice were fed
ginger before and after tumor cells were administered. In
their next round of experiments, the researchers plan to feed
ginger to mice only after they have grown tumors to a certain
size.
"The new experiments should be more
clinically relevant," said Bode. "They will get at the
question of whether a patient could eat ginger to slow the
metastasis of a nonoperable tumor."
The University of Minnesota has applied
for a patent on the use of [6]-gingerol as an anti-cancer
agent,and the technology has been licensed to Pediatric
Pharmaceuticals (Iselin, NJ). The work was supported by the
Hormel Foundation and Pediatric Pharmaceuticals.
[Back] | 
