African Medicinal Plants Could Help Stop Tumor Growth: Study

Medicinal plants found in Africa contain chemicals that may be able to stop the spread of cancer cells reveals a new study.

This is the conclusion of researchers following laboratory experiments conducted at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU).

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Giving an impetus to the traditional medicinal system, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) today signed an MoU with National Innovation Foundation.

The plant materials will now undergo further analysis in order to evaluate their therapeutic potential.

"The active substances present in African medicinal plants may be capable of killing off tumor cells that are resistant to more than one drug. They thus represent an excellent starting point for the development of new therapeutic treatments for cancers that do not respond to conventional chemotherapy regimens," Professor Thomas Efferth of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Biochemistry - Therapeutic Life Sciences at Mainz University, said.

For the past four years, Efferth and biochemist Dr. Victor Keute of the University of Dschang in Cameroon have been studying the active substances in African plants such as the giant globe thistle, wild pepper, speargrass, and Ethiopian pepper.

Call To Protect Traditional Knowledge Of African Medicinal Plants
The African Union and World Health Organization must do something to draft a model law so that traditional knowledge of medicinal plants can be preserved in African countries.

Multi-drug resistance is one of the most feared problems in cancer therapy because in such cases most of the standard chemical cancer drugs used in therapy fail and the patient's chance of survival is thus dramatically reduced.

The problem cannot usually be resolved by simply increasing the dosage as this also results in the exacerbation of undesirable side effects.

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"We are now looking for substances that can both break down tumor resistance and not produce side effects," Efferth, who also works with medicinal plants used in traditional Chinese medicine, said.

The research is published in the scientific journal Phytomedicine.

Scientists Concerned Over Extinction of Large Number of Medicinal Plants
Large number of medicinal plants are at risk of extinction, and could spark a global health crisis, according to experts.

Source-ANI