HERE AT THE MOSS REPORTS
In September, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued
a warning letter to the Utah-based company XanGo, requiring
that the company cease making exaggerated health claims for
the exotic fruit drink, mangosteen.
Readers of this newsletter may recall that two years ago
I wrote critically about XanGo, pointing out the unsubstantiated
and over-inflated claims that were being made by promoters
of this beverage.
To read my previous newsletters on XanGo and mangosteen please
click or go to:
http://www.cancerdecisions.com/050904.html
and
http://www.cancerdecisions.com/051604.html
Now, in the light of the FDA warning, an article by Linda
Fantin in the Salt Lake Tribune takes an in-depth
look at the entrepreneurs who founded and continue to head
the wildly successful multi-level marketing company, as it
cruises towards sales of $1 billion per year. My newsletters,
which were published under the title "A Friendly Skeptic
Looks At Mangosteen," are quoted by Fantin in this article.
To read the Salt Lake Tribune article on XanGo,
please click or go to:
http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4494049
Monitoring the parallel worlds of conventional and alternative
medicine and chronicling developments in cancer treatment
has been the focus of my life’s work. The fruit of my
long involvement in this field is The
Moss Reports, a comprehensive library of diagnosis-specific
reports on the best available conventional and alternative
approaches to more than 200 different types of cancer. For
cancer patients and their families, a Moss
Report offers a truly invaluable resource. These reports
can be ordered and downloaded directly from our Web site,
www.cancerdecisions.com.
For those who have already purchased a Moss
Report on their specific cancer diagnosis, a phone
consultation with Dr. Ralph Moss can be enormously
helpful in narrowing down the options and arriving at a coherent
treatment strategy. A recent phone consultee put it this way:
"My husband and I would like to express our deep gratitude
and appreciation for the time that Dr. Moss spent with us.
He answered all of our questions and provided us with a
tremendous amount of resources and direction in order to
help my husband with fighting his cancer. Dr. Moss’
time was invaluable - we learned more from him yesterday
than we have learned over the past 2 1/2 years that my husband
has been battling this disease." — K& CI.
If you are a Moss Report
client and would like to schedule a consultation with Dr.
Moss, please call 1-800-980-1234 (814-238-3367
from outside the US) or send an email to Jacquie@cancerdecisions.com.
CURRENT TOPICS
It is a modern day mantra, widely repeated and unquestioningly
accepted, that screening mammography offers the best chance
of reducing breast cancer deaths. But is this really true?
What can a woman really hope to gain by regular mammography?
Are there hidden dangers in the methods used to detect and
diagnose breast cancer?
Our report, "Mammography,
Biopsy and the Detection of Breast Cancer" looks
in depth at the largely unpublicized shortcomings of screening
mammography and also discusses needle biopsies, with an explanation
of the possible link between this type of breast biopsy and
the spread of cancer to nearby lymph nodes.
This report, priced at $9.95, is one of our
Current Topics series, and can be downloaded directly
from our Web site, www.cancerdecisions.com.
Other available reports include:
SCORE ONE FOR VITAMIN E
There has been so much negative publicity surrounding the
use of antioxidants by patients undergoing treatment for cancer
that one could be forgiven for getting the impression that
it is the use of antioxidants, rather than the toxicity of
chemotherapy, that most seriously threatens the patient’s
immune system. But now comes a report from the American Association
for Cancer Research (AACR) with some surprisingly positive
things to say about a vitamin E derivative. (The report appeared
October 1, 2006 in the journal Cancer Research.)
University of Arizona scientists administered alpha-TEA,
a chemically altered form of vitamin E, to cancer-susceptible
mice via their food, and found that by increasing dietary
intake of the vitamin in this way they were able to reduce
the spread of an aggressive type of breast cancer in these
animals. The scientists suggested that the compound, taken
in pill form, could be used to treat human metastatic cancer.
Emmanuel T. Akporiaye, Ph.D., Professor in the Department
of Immunobiology at the University of Arizona, reported that
the synthetic vitamin was actually more effective and more
clinically useful when put in food than when delivered via
injections or forced feeding.
"These preliminary studies are very promising, and it
could be that combining this synthetic vitamin E derivative
with other anti-cancer treatments may offer the potential
of both treating and preventing human breast cancer,"
Dr. Akporiaye said.
It is not generally believed that vitamin E (or alpha-tocopherol)
can destroy tumor cells by itself. So, in order to improve
the vitamin’s cancer killing ability, more potent derivatives
have been developed in the laboratory. One such compound is
alpha-tocopheryl succinate (alpha-TOS), which has already
been advocated as a cancer preventive. Another is alpha-tocopheryloxyacetic
acid (alpha-TEA), an acetic acid derivative of vitamin E,
which is the subject of this latest paper.
By replacing the hydroxyl group in vitamin E with an acid
one helps force cancer cells to self-destruct, according to
Dr. Akporiaye. These acid-incorporating compounds work to
free up certain apoptosis-inducing proteins that are normally
kept in an inactive state in the cell. (Apoptosis is the process
by which cells self-destruct in a programmed and orderly fashion.)
"Cell survival is maintained when pro-apoptotic proteins
are confined, and these synthetic forms of vitamin E release
them, pushing the cell into committing suicide," Prof.
Akporiaye said. "Only a little part of vitamin E is changed
in these synthetic derivatives, but they show amazing anticancer
properties, and they selectively target tumor cells,"
he added.
Normally, vitamin E is only soluble in fats. But by adding
sodium hydroxide to the vitamin, scientists have also managed
to make it soluble in water. This process creates what are
known as "vesiculated" forms of the vitamin, called
respectively V-alpha-TOS and V-alpha-TEA. Experimentally,
they have been used to treat diverse cancers such as melanoma,
lung and breast cancer in rodent models.
In the latest study, the Arizona researchers evaluated anti-tumor
effects of V-alpha-TOS and V-alpha-TEA on mice that had an
aggressive form of mammary cancer, similar to human breast
cancer in that it readily metastasizes. They looked at how
well alpha-TEAwould affect tumor growth if incorporated into
the food that the mice were given daily.
They found that by injecting V-alpha-TOS or V-alpha-TEA into
the peritoneal cavity of the mice they were able to reduce
the average volume of tumors two-fold, when compared to control
mice that did not receive such injections.
A Dietary Application
To gauge the effectiveness of a purely dietary application,
both as a preventive and as a cancer treatment, the researchers
had some special rat chow manufactured which incorporated
a fairly large quantity of alpha-TEA.
In the prevention study, mice ate alpha-TEA-laced chow beginning
on the same day that they were injected with mammary tumor
cells that are known to spread quickly to lungs and bones.
These mice were then allowed to eat as much food as they wanted.
At the end of 29 days, the average tumor volume was reduced
by an extraordinary 6.7-fold, compared to control mice who
had not been fed alpha-TEA.
In the treatment experiment, mice started eating alpha-TEA
chow 11 days after tumors were first implanted. In the experimental
group, scientists observed a 3.6-fold reduction in average
tumor volume when compared to control mice, the Arizona biologists
said.
In both the prevention and treatment studies, mice that were
fed alpha-TEA-laced chow had a 4.8-fold reduction in the number
of tumors that had spread to the lungs, compared to control
mice. "The results were very impressive," Dr. Akporiaye
told AACR. "The chow was very effective in slowing down
the growth rate of the tumor and significantly reducing metastases."
In addition, the alpha-TEA-laced diet produced no visible
adverse effects, not even weight loss, he said.
"The combined characteristics of ease of delivery, relevance
of route of delivery and selectivity for killing tumor cells
suggest that dietary alpha-TEA may be useful for treating
metastatic breast cancer," according to the veteran scientist,
whose main interest is tumor immunology and cancer vaccine
development.
The Arizona researchers are now testing the effect of reducing
the doses of alpha-TEA in the animal chow and they plan to
test this synthetic vitamin in combination with so-called
dendritic cell immunotherapy. "When you kill tumor cells,
they release antigens that can be picked up by specialized
cells that stimulate the immune system, and this two-step
process could provide a longer lasting outcome," Dr.
Akporiaye said.
Some CAM-oriented scientists have long contended that semi-synthetic
forms of vitamin E could be useful in cancer prevention and
treatment, and this report from Arizona seemingly confirms
and extends their finding. In particular, Kedar Prasad, PhD,
formerly of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center,
Denver, has long contended that vitamin E succinate has anticancer
properties. In fact, much to the consternation of some cautious
oncologists, he formulated a vitamin E succinate product line
for a major supplement manufacturer (Solgar), and this has
long been popular with alternative practitioners. The latest
findings from Arizona broadly support the idea that vitamin
E has powerful anticancer properties.
--Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.
References:
Hahn T, Szabo L, Gold M, Ramanathapuram L, Hurley
LH, Akporiaye ET. Dietary administration of the pro-apoptotic
Vitamin E analog alpha-tocopheryloxyacetic acid inhibits metastatic
murine breast cancer. Cancer Research, October 1,
2006.
Lawson KA, Anderson K, Menchaca
M, Atkinson J, Sun L, Knight V, Gilbert BE, Conti C, Sanders
BG, Kline K. Novel vitamin E analogue decreases syngeneic
mouse mammary tumor burden and reduces lung metastasis. Mol
Cancer Ther. 2003 May;2(5):437-44.
Prasad KN, Kumar B, Yan XD,
Hanson AJ, Cole WC. Alpha-tocopheryl succinate, the
most effective form of vitamin E for adjuvant cancer treatment:
a review. J Am Coll Nutr. 2003 Apr;22(2):108-17.
Review.
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IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER
The news and other items in this newsletter
are intended for informational purposes only. Nothing in this
newsletter is intended to be a substitute for professional
medical advice.
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