Turmeric Extract Strikes To The Root Cause of Cancer Malignancy [1]

By: Sayer Ji, 01/29/2014

A new turmeric study published in Cancer Letters is paving the way for a revolution in the way that we both understand and treat cancer. Titled, "Targeting cancer stem cells by curcumin and clinical applications [2]," U.S. researchers evaluated the primary polyphenol in the Indian spice known as curcumin [3] for its ability to target cancer stem cells (CSCs), which are believed to be at the root cause of tumor formation [4] and malignancy.

Whereas conventional models of cancer [5] assumed that the majority of the cancer cells within a tumor possess self-renewal capacity to differing degrees, the CSC model proposes that, "[T]he initiation, maintenance, and growth of a tumor is driven by a minor population of cancer cells termed cancer stem cells (CSCs)," and that "These CSCs undergo continuous self-renewal and differentiate to heterogeneous cancer cells, yielding new tumors recapitulating the parental tumors, while the majority of cancer cells lack self-renewal capacity." 

 

For more on this story visit www.greenmedinfo.com [6]