Super-effective cancer-fighting berry discovered growing in Australia
| BEC CREW |
| WEDNESDAY, 08 OCTOBER 2014 |
Scientists have discovered that a berry found exclusively in Far North Queensland has amazing cancer-fighting properties. And human trials have already been approved.
A team of Australian researchers led by Glen Boyle from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Queensland, has just completed an eight-year study to find that a compound in a berry growing in Far North Queensland can kill face and neck tumours, plus melanomas on the skin.
The berry comes from the blushwood tree (Hylandia dockrillii), which is a rainforest-dwelling variety known for centuries by local indigenous communities as having fast-acting medicinal properties. Now a drug has been manufactured using a compound found in the berry, and it’s so far been used on 300 animals, including cats, dogs, horses, and Tasmanian devils, who were afflicted with different kinds of superficial tumours.
According to Jessica van Vonderen at ABC News, in 75 percent of the 300 animals cases, the tumour disappeared and has so far not come back.
"There's a compound in the seed - it's a very, very complicated process to purify this compound and why it's there in the first place, we don't know,” Boyle told van Vonderen. "The compound works in three ways essentially: it kills the tumour cells directly, it cuts off the blood supply and it also activates the body's own immune system to clean up the mess that's left behind."
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