According to a recent study, carried out by Penn state food scientists, a compound found in green tea may be capable of destroying oral cancer cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.
This compound is epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). It has been studied extensively for its ability to prevent and beat cancer, and to increase metabolism, slow the aging process and protect the brain.
Even though EGCG has been shown in previous studies to kill cancer cells, scientists weren’t sure why or how. This study helped bring them understand that EGCG may trigger a process in the mitochondria that leads to cell death.
According to Joshua Lambert, an associate professor of food science and co-director of Penn State’s Center for Plant and Mushroom Foods for Health:
“EGCG is doing something to damage the mitochondria and that mitochondrial damage sets up a cycle causing more damage and it spirals out, until the cell undergoes programmed cell death. It looks like EGCG causes the formation of reactive oxygen species in cancer cells, which damages the mitochondria and the mitochondria responds by making more reactive oxygen species.”
Over time, the mitochondria loses more of its defence with a breakdown in the expression of antioxidant genes, and the cancer cells eventually succumb to EGCG in full and die. Lambert added that the mitochondria turns off its mechanism of protection at the same time that EGCG causes this oxidative stress.
The researchers also noted that a protein called sirtuin 3 (SIRT3) is critical to the process of mitochondrial function, which is affected by EGCG.
“It plays an important role in mitochondrial function and in anti-oxidant response in lots of tissues in the body, so the idea that EGCG might selectively affect the activity of sirtuin 3 in cancer cells — to turn it off — and in normal cells — to turn it on — is probably applicable in multiple kinds of cancers.”
Fortunately, the EGCG didn’t cause any harm to normal cells, but actually appeared to increase the protective capabilities of normal cells.
The researchers said that the research was done using petri dishes, and that the next step is to test on animals and humans. They hope to make anti-cancer treatments without all of the harmful side effects caused by conventional treatments like chemotherapy.
“The problem with a lot of chemotherapy drugs — especially early chemotherapy drugs — is that they really just target rapidly dividing cells, so cancer divides rapidly, but so do cells in your hair follicles and cells in your intestines, so you have a lot of side effects,” said Lambert. “But you don’t see these sorts of side effects with green tea consumption.”
