Methyl Jasmonate - Clinical Results

A newly published paper reports the first clinical results from Methyl Jasmonate:

Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci. 2011 Mar;15(3):333-6.

A preliminary study of the local treatment of preneoplastic and malignant skin lesions using methyl jasmonate.

Palmieri B, Iannitti T, Capone S, Flescher E.

Source

Department of General Surgery and Surgical Specialties, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Medical School, Surgical Clinic, Modena, Italy.

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Jasmonates are plant stress hormones. These small hydrophobic compounds exhibit anti-cancer activities, in vitro and in vivo, against cancer cells of various histological origins. Moreover, they show a selective activity against transformed cells and affect drug-resistant cells as well.

AIM:

The aim of this study was to evaluate the activity of a powerful jasmonate derivative, that is methyl jasmonate.

MATERIAL AND METHODS:

Methyl jasmonate was applied topically on cancerous and pre-cancerous skin lesions from eight patients.

RESULTS:

Methyl jasmonate did not cause any meaningful local or systemic side effects. Three patients exhibited positive responses. Two patients had complete recovery and one had a recurrence of the lesion three months post treatment.

CONCLUSIONS:

Methyl jasmonate is a potentially promising novel topical treatment for prcancerous and cancerous skin lesions. Methyl jasmonate should be evaluated in a larger series of patients.

This is interesting and encouraging news.

It does lead me to ask the question: are there any readers of the original Grouppe Kurosawa who tried Methyl Jasmonate? The old blog was always short of people reporting back their experiences, yet we do know that lots of people did take Steve Martin's advice to try it.


If you want to help other people, then please report back your experiences - good, bad or indifferent. Please.

Flaxseed and Cancer

One of the anti-cancer agents that Steve Martin was interested in was Flax seed oil. He mentioned it on many posts and recommended it to cancer and HIV patients. It's interesting, therefore to see the following research being published recently:

Flaxseed oil-trastuzumab interaction in breast cancer.
Mason JK, Chen J, Thompson LU.


Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Abstract

Flaxseed oil (FO), which is rich in n-3 fatty acid, is commonly consumed by breast cancer patients because of its potential anti-cancer effects. Trastuzumab (TRAS) is the primary drug for epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) positive breast cancer. We investigated in athymic mice whether combining dietary FO (8%) with TRAS treatment (2.5 or 5mg/kg body weight) can cause better or adverse effect on established human breast tumors overexpressing HER2 (BT-474). Control tumors significantly grew 187%, TRAS2.5 treated tumors did not change, while TRAS5, FO+TRAS2.5 and FO+TRAS5 treated tumors significantly regressed 75%, 89% and 84%, respectively, after 4weeks treatment. Two weeks after stopping TRAS treatment while continuing on same diet, tumor size in FO+TRAS2.5 group was 87% lower than in TRAS2.5 group and was not different from TRAS5 group with or without FO. Combined TRAS2.5 treatment with FO caused a significantly lower tumor cell proliferation and higher apoptosis compared to TRAS2.5 treatment alone and showed similar effect to TRAS5 treatment with or without FO. Hence, FO did not interfere with TRAS but rather enhanced its tumor-reducing effects and combined FO and low dose TRAS was as effective as high dose TRAS treatment.

At the very least it suggests that Flaxseed and Flaxseed oil ought to be considered as strong anti-cancer foods. Worth discussing with your oncologist for sure...

Another interesting website

For anyone interested in reading about curcumin and cancer, then a great site to look for is: http://margaret.healthblogs.org/. Along with our other favourite: http://anticancer.org.uk/, it's a site that's worth keeping up with.

Are there any other recommended sites worth looking at?

Angry words from a cancer patient

Angry words from AntiCancer,org.uk on what we pay for in terms of energy policy and what this means for cancer patients.

The bottom line: Angry? We ought to be bloody furious.

Hat Tip/JunkscienceSidebar.com

Doing Your Own Cancer Research

Without wanting to make a fetish of peer review, it still stands that any serious research on cancer treatments will have been published in a scientific journal. Something published on a web-site or forum and without supporting evidence has to be treated with a huge amount of scepticism. What it says may be true, but you need to know the evidence – and that doesn't mean anonymous web users reporting second hand stories of what works (or doesn't work).

Pubmed is the best place to start when looking for published research. You'll find everything here, from studies on curcumin, resveratrol, glutamine, methyl jasmonate to the latest in chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and surgery and so on. If you've not got the scientific training you can still learn a lot from reading the abstract and discussion sections of a paper. For help in interpreting the results that are listed a good place to go is the Anticancer.org.uk site, particularly the 'How To Read A Cancer Paper' article.

Cancer cures and the internet

The original Grouppe Kurosowa blog was set up by the late Steve Martin as a vehicle for exploring his theories on cancer treatment. The blog was his way of thinking out loud and musing on various aspects of therapy. His main point was to come up with a set of protocols that could cure cancer using non-toxic and easily available drugs and supplements. His views changed over time and the various protocols he developed changed too. For example curcumin was in, then it was out. The last sets of protocols were mainly based around the combination of glutamine, sodium selenite and methyl jasmonate. All of these were used in combination to generate large amounts of reactive oxygen species (ROS), so that this would overwhelm the anti-oxidant defences of tumour cells. His protocols specifically forbade the use of anti-oxidants. Various versions of these protocols can still be found floating around the dark, dim recesses of the web.

Steve Martin passed away a while back and his family kept the blog site up for a while and then took it down. Like a lot of people I has book-marked the site and came back to find that the blog was vacant again. Rather than let it go to some unscrupulous person who’d exploit the existing traffic for financial gain I have taken the name as a gesture of goodwill.

I think that although Steve Martin had some interesting theories, his protocols were largely untested and potentially dangerous. He did not just present theories, with all of the caveats that that entails, he proposed concrete protocols for people to follow to the letter. He promised that this would cure cancer. He wasn’t a doctor, and even if he was to propose general protocols without even knowing an individual’s medical history and current status is dangerous. Therefore this site will not be posting those protocols again. Instead, patients are urged to do plenty of research for themselves (and we’ll point to some interesting sites to do this), but not to take on trust the ‘cures’ that people like to post on the internet. The sad truth is that there are no guaranteed cures – and that goes as much for conventional treatments as it does for the ‘alternatives’ that litter the web.

Steve Martin had interesting theories, but he could not cure cancer.

Please read stuff carefully.

Please practice scepticism.

Please do not be taken in by false promises of cures.

Not Grouppe Kurosawa

Nope - at least not the old Grouppe Kurosawa. Watch this space though...