Foods that fight cancer

Hippocrates, the dubbed “father of modern medicine” for whom the Hippocratic oath is named, is famed for saying, “let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food”. We know of course, that “the Hippo” (as his Grecian friends probably didn’t know him) was spot on and that food can exert many health promoting and disease preventing properties. This much is not news, but it is exciting when we find out exactly how some foods can combat things like cancer which is precisely what a new study has done.

The thing about cancer cells is that they are actually incredibly successful. At least, as far as their own survival is concerned they are successful to the extent that have a kind of immortality. This is the problem for the person with cancer, the cancer cells bypass the processes that should cause them to die as part of a regular cycle and so they grow out of control and cancers develop. According to new research though, we now know how a substance called apigenin from foods makes cancer cells mortal again.

Apigenin is found in many plants but it is particularly richly supplied in parsley, celery, and chamomile tea. The researchers found that apigenin binds with around 160 different proteins in the human body. Among the most important of these though was a protein called hnRNPA2.

This hnRNPA2 protein influences the activity of messenger RNA (mRNA) which in turn carries the instructions needed to produce a specific protein. The modification of mRNA determines which protein the mRNA will cause to be produced. Abnormal modification (splicing) is the culprit behind around 80 per cent of cancers. The researchers found that apigenin when applied to breast cancer cells causes them to splice mRNA normally so that the cancer cells are no longer immortal and are programmed to die as usual, or become sensitive to chemotherapy.

It doesn’t mean that you need to take an apigenin pill, it just means that we now know another mechanism that means when you eat healthily you reduce your risk of cancer. You don’t need another reason to eat healthy food, but this kind of study may just deepen the experience.