Sea Cucumbers & Cancer

macygrace

Very interesting, along with the embedded links and articles at the bottom of page.

http://naturalsociety.com/sea-cucumber-shrinks-cancer-cells-95-percent/#ixzz2jwluwCJK

SelenaWolf

Back when I was dating a Korean man (many, many, many moons ago), part of their traditional cuisine was sea cucumber.  It's quite good.

curveball

Reading the article it does look like Frondoside, an extract of sea cucumber, may be the basis of an effective new treatment, but the linked article includes inaccuracies/overstatements. For example, the article says that the linked study shows high percentages of effectiveness against several types of cancer. The actual study is called "Frondoside-A suppressive effects on lung cancer survival, tumor growth, angiogenesis, invasion, and metastasis". I read the abstract and searched the study for the percent sign, and as far as I was able to tell the article speaks only to effects on lung cancer cells. This is not to say that Frondoside doesn't affect breast cancer, because that possibility has been tested too, also with promising results--see this abstract, which has a link to the full text of the study report. The article says "Traditional chemo drugs shrunk the tumors by 47 percent, but the risks of chemo treatment are far greater than any side-effects or risks of sea cucumber", but fails to mention the study's finding that a combination of Cisplatin and Frondoside was much more effective than either one alone. (Frondoside A, 40.3% reduction in tumor growth; cisplatin, 46.9%; Frondoside A + cisplatin, 67.6%)

The article also doesn't mention that the mice in the study were treated with a highly purified extract, injected intraperitoneally, and for this reason I think the author is jumping the gun to say that sea cucumber is an "anti cancer" food. There are several more questions that need to be answered before coming to that conclusion--questions like, does Frondosin in the bloodstream have the same effect as Frondosin injected intraperitoneally? If so, what is the blood level of Frondosin needed for therapeutic effectiveness? How much Frondosin is there in the amount of sea-cucumber eaten in a typical meal or taken as a supplement? Does Frondosin taken orally survive digestion and enter the bloodstream? If so, how much sea cucumber must be taken orally to reach an effective concentration in the blood? Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others.

Don't get me wrong, based on the study, Frondosin sounds very promising, but the linked study was done in-vitro and in a mouse model. We all know that sometimes treatments look very good in-vitro or on mice, but don't live up to their promise when tested in humans. Having said that, I do hope Frondosin does turn into a new treatment.

macygrace

That was a wonderful analysis curveball! And thanks for taking the time to do it. I started digging around a bit more on the subject & found more info.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0053087#s4

sgrant4812

Sea Cucumber has been used in at least 2 Clinical Trials and many people have used it with great success, check out the web site www.thecancerhasgone.com here you will find people using the product having great success