Although highly successful in killing cancer cells, chemotherapy can trigger a number of side effects including hair loss, nausea, and fatigue. This is because the drugs inadvertently kill healthy cells in other parts of the body, as well as attack cancer cells.
Magdalena Winkiel, from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and her colleagues said the properties of medicinal plants were worth re-examining. The team reviewed the evidence on the glycoalkaloids abundant compounds in the plant family nightshade which includes potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant.
In the right doses, these chemicals can be “powerful clinical tools,” Winkiel’s team said.
They focused on five glycoalkaloids: solanine , chaconine , solasonine solamargine and tomatine, Winkiel believes they could be used to develop drugs in the future.
The findings, published in Frontiers in Pharmacology detail that solanine prevents potentially carcinogenic chemicals from being transformed within the body.
Studies on a particular type of leukemia cells also showed that, in small doses, solanine kills them, while chaconine has anti-inflammatory properties, with the potential to treat leukemia. sepsis For its part, solamargine can stop the reproduction of liver cancer cells.
The researchers say it could be an adjunctive treatment because it targets cancer stem cells, which are thought to play an important role in cancer drug resistance.
But research has yet to be done on how the chemicals can fight cancer in human cells, one of the early stages of the research.