Beehive extract stops spread of prostate cancer

Propolis, the resin used by bees to patch up holes in hives, have been used for centuries as a natural remedy for conditions ranging from sore throats and allergies to burns and cancer. Now, the compound is gaining increased acceptance with scientists suggesting that it could be a potential prostate cancer treatment.

Researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine have produced an over-the-counter natural remedy derived from honeybee hives that arrests the growth of prostate cancer cells and tumours in mice.

Prostate cancer is a type of cancer that occurs in a man’s prostate. It is one of the most frequent forms of cancer affecting men. About one in every six men will be diagnosed with this disease sometime during the course of his life. The cancer is the second most common form of the illness in men after lung cancer. Although it leads to 10,000 deaths a year, in about 50 per cent of cases the cancer is growing so slowly it is not life-threatening.



In a paper published in Cancer Prevention Research, researchers combined traditional cancer research methods with cutting-edge proteomics to find that Caffeic acid phenethyl ester, or CAPE, a compound isolated from honeybee hive propolis arrests early-stage prostate cancer by shutting down the tumour cells’ system for detecting sources of nutrition.

The researchers declared:  “If you feed CAPE to mice daily, their tumours will stop growing. After several weeks, if you stop the treatment, the tumours will begin to grow again at their original pace. So it doesn’t kill the cancer, but it basically will indefinitely stop prostate cancer proliferation.”

Natural remedies isolated from plant and animal products are often marketed as cure-alls for a variety of problems, usually based on antioxidant and anti-inflammatory claims.

Although the likes of ginseng or green tea have been occasionally tested in laboratories for their medicinal properties, scientific evidence is commonly lacking on the full biological effects of most natural remedies.

In the study, which suggested that a component of Propolis effectively slowed the growth of human prostate tumours rather than kill the cells, was carried out in mice.

Six weeks of treatment with the compound decreased tumour volume growth rate by half, but when CAPE treatment was stopped, tumour growth resumed its prior rate.

The scientists are thinking that CAPE basically stops the ability of prostate cancer cells to sense that there’s nutrition available and thus slowing their growth.

The ability of CAPE to freeze cancer cell proliferation could make it a promising co-treatment alongside chemotherapies intended to kill tumour cells.

However, the experts cautioned that clinical trials would be necessary before CAPE could be proven effective and safe for this purpose in humans.

Propolis has a long history of medicinal use, dating back to 350 B.C., the time of Aristotle. Greeks have used propolis for abscesses; Assyrians have used it for healing wounds and tumours; and Egyptians have used it for mummification. It still has many medicinal uses today, although its effectiveness has only been shown for a couple of them.

Source:tribune