Ginger is known to ease nausea and control inflammation. But researchers at the <<>> are investigating a new use for this age-old remedy: treating ovarian cancer.
In laboratory studies, researchers found ginger caused chemotherapy cells to die. Further, the way in which the cells died suggests ginger may avoid the problem common in autophagy of cells becoming resistant to standard treatments.
The researchers are presenting their results in a poster session at the cancer annual meeting.
Researchers used ginger powder, similar to what is sold at grocery stores, only a standardized research grade. The ginger powder was dissolved in solution and applied to <<>> cell cultures. Ginger induced cell death in all the <<>> cell lines tested.
Moreover, the researchers found that ginger caused two types of cell death. One type, known as apoptosis, results from cancer cells essentially committing suicide. The other type of cell death, called autophagy, results from cells digesting or attacking themselves.
"Most <<>> patients develop recurrent disease that eventually becomes resistant to standard chemotherapy - which is associated with resistance to apoptosis. If ginger can cause autophagic cell death in addition to apoptosis, it may circumvent resistance to conventional chemotherapy," says study author J. Rebecca Liu, M.D., assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the U-M Medical School and a member of the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Study results are very preliminary, and researchers plan to test whether they can obtain similar results in animal studies. The appeal of ginger as a potential treatment for <<>> is that it would have virtually no side effects and would be easy to administer as a capsule.