Ralph Moss on asparagus and cancer

[Guest guest]

From this week's newsletter. Rather interesting IMO . . .

 

Cancer Decisions® - Asparagus and Cancer

http://www.cancerdecisions.com/content/view/391/2/lang,english/

 

Asparagus and Cancer

 

Sunday, 31 January 2010

I recently was told by one of my phone consultees that he was making a

slurry of asparagus as a treatment for his cancer. For 35 years I have

been hearing about the allegedly curative properties of asparagus. There

is a single scientific study from China indicated that an asparagus

extract can kill some cancer cells in the test tube (Liu 2009). But the

Internet story of an alleged asparagus cure both predates that, and also

goes way beyond it in its claims. It has all the hallmarks of an urban

myth.

 

The " asparagus cure " apparently originated with one Richard R. Vensal,

DDS. There are thousands of references to this Dr. Vensal on the

Internet, but no explanation of who he was or how he arrived at his

astonishing idea. No Richard Vensal is the author of any PubMed-listed

scientific articles or any books in the gigantic National Library of

Medicine catalog. I do remember some articles on the topic of the

asparagus cure in Prevention and other health magazines in the 1970s.

But, if I remember correctly, these were unsupported by scientific

studies.

 

The Guinea Pig Connection

 

Ironically, there is indeed a connection between asparagus and cancer,

but it not in the manner that most people believe. The real

asparagus-and-cancer story began with an observation by the research

pathologist John G. Kidd (1909-1991) at New York Hospital-Cornell

Medical Center in 1953. Kidd discovered that the blood serum of healthy

guinea pigs killed leukemia and a few other types of cancer in mice. A

few years later Dr. John D. Broome of Texas figured out why. Guinea pigs

have in their blood an enzyme called L-asparaginase, which destroys the

amino acid L-asparagine. Normal cells generally manufacture their own

L-asparagine, but leukemia cells are often unable to do so. They have to

'steal' their supply from normal cells.

 

So the idea arose of using L-asparaginase as a cancer treatment and it

turned out to occasionally be dramatically effective. In 1967 Time

magazine reported on the complete remission of one of the first patients

to receive the drug:

 

" Nine-year-old Frank Hayes Jr. had been in the last stages of acute

leukemia when Dr. Joseph M. Hill began giving him injections of the

bacterial extract, L-asparaginase, " Time reported. " Within a month, the

boy's grotesquely swollen glands had shrunk, and analysis of his blood

cells showed no active cancer " ( " Cancer: Secret from the Guinea Pigs, "

Time, April 14, 1967).

 

Subsequent treatments were rarely as dramatic as this, but the drug was

found helpful. As a result, to this day, L-asparaginase (now called

Elspar) is part of the standard regimen for acute lymphoblastic leukemia

(ALL) as well as some other rare tumors. The basic idea is to destroy as

much of the circulating L-asparagine as possible, in order to starve the

leukemic cells.

 

Most cancer cells, however, resemble normal cells in their ability to

synthesize L-aspargine and so L-asparaginase has little activity on

them. But for people with ALL and certain rare cancers eating a great

many asparagus, with their abundant supply of L-asparagine, would seem

to be a bad idea, especially if they are currently on a regimen

containing Elspar. It would be counterproductive.

 

That said, I don't mean to denigrate that possibility that asparagus

(like so many other plants) might some day be shown to contain helpful

constituents. Last year, researchers in Nanjing, China reported the

presence of a compound called Asparanin A from standard asparagus. It is

" an active cytotoxic component, " they said. Asparanin A arrests cell

growth and also induces apoptosis (the most common form of programmed

cell deaths) in human liver cancer cells. Asparanin A " shows promise as

a preventive and/or therapeutic agent " against human liver cancer (Liu

2009). But this is a far cry from the claims of an asparagus cure that

one finds circulating in viral fashion on the Internet these days.

 

--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

 

References:

Broome, J. D. 1961. Evidence that the L-asparaginase activity of guinea

pig serum is responsible for its antilymphoma effects. Nature. 191:1114.

Broome, JD. Evidence that the L-asparaginasc of guinea pig serum is

responsible for its antilymphoma effects. I. Properties of the

L-asparaginase of guinea pig serum in relation to those of the

antilymphoma substance. J Exptl Med. 1963;118:99.

Broome, JD. Evidence that the L-asparaginase of guinea pig serum is

responsible for its antilymphoma effects. II. Lymphoma 6C3HED cells

cultured in a medium devoid of I~asparagine lose their susceptibility to

the effects of guinea pig serum in vivo. Y. Expt. Med. 1963;118:121.

Kidd, JG. Regression of transplanted lymphomas induced in viro by means

of normal guinea pig serum. I. Course of transplanted cancers of various

kinds in mice and rats given guinea pig serum, horse serum, or rabbit

serum. J. ExptL Med. 1953;98:565.

Kidd, JG. Regression of transplanted lymphomas induced in viva by means

of normal guinea pig serum. II. Studies on the nature of the active

serum constituent: histological mechanism of the regression; tests for

effects of guinea pig serum on lymphoma cells in vitro: discussion. Y.

Exptl. Meal. 1953;98:583.

Liu W, Huang X, Qi Q, et al. Asparanin A induces G(2)/M cell cycle

arrest and apoptosis in human hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cells.

Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 2009;381:700-705.