Vitamin C is potential for cancer treatment,which has been approved in mice and now waiting to be approved in human bodies.
A recent paper reported that vitamin C can be used for Cancer treatment and the effect is exclusively obvious for the cancer cells with KKRAS or BRAF gene drove mutations. But at present all these conclusions were got from lab mice. If the following clinic trials proves that people can also be treated in this way, there will be a new breakthrough on the way of drug discovery in developing effective and cheap treatment method for cancers.
Vitamin C has been found usefully against various illnesses. But when it comes to cancers, doubts exist all the time. Many chemists that focus on the study of vitamin C’s medical effect on cancer contributed to the new finding.
Early in 1970s, successful examples of vitamin C treating cancer were reported; unfortunately the good news was swollen by the later two clinical trial failures in the same age carried out by the Mayo Clinic. However, the enthusiastic chemists still worked on the area to probe about more.
Not long after the failures, new finding that a relative high dose of vitamin C being intravenous could kill cancer cells was released. Another discovery promoted the researches on vitamin C’s function on cancer treatment. A graduate student named Jihye Yun targeted KRAS and BRAF genes mutations as one of the cause of colon tumor cells fast growth. Point is that colon cancer cells with either of the genes could be killed by high dose of vitamin C. Then the tests on mice were conducted on mice with colon cancer cells. The mice were injected with vitamin C which equals to an amount of vitamin contained in about three hundred oranges, positive effects were showed by presenting a slower growth speed. A clinic trial on human is not set out yet, but it may be carried out soon. It’s said with the present results the researches got from the studies, it can be identified that the group of people who will fit the vitamin C treatment and who won’t, which seems a very attracting method for colon cancer.
But reality is that the intravenous injection form vitamin C is not as convenient as the traditional form.
This new finding paves a foundation for the development of cheap but effective treatment for cancers if it achieves success finally. However if the result is reverse and human body can’t hold up the vitamin C treatment, there is still something acquired in the process and it can’t be said all the effort that has been put into is in vain.
ReferencesVitamin C selectively kills KRAS and BRAF mutant colorectal cancer cells by targeting GAPDH
