Recent studies have discovered that natural compounds called Oligosaccharides, derived from apples, killed up to 46 percent of human colon cancer cells in vitro, and outperformed the most commonly used chemo drug by a wide margin at every dose level tested.
And unlike toxic chemo drugs, oligosaccharides are natural, health-promoting compounds widely present in fruits and vegetables.
A natural solution for a leading cause of cancer death?
Colon cancer is currently the second leading cause of cancer-related death for women worldwide, and the third leading cause for men.
The standard-of-care chemo drug used for colon cancer has seen limited success, and can have serious side effects such as coronary spasm, neurotoxicity, anemia, and immunosuppression.
Researchers focused on apples as a natural means for treating and preventing colon cancer because they are the most widely consumed fruit in many countries, and have already demonstrated activity against breast cancer, ovarian cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer, and colon cancer.
Apple oligosaccharides were used in this study because their anti-cancer properties have been established in previous studies, and they can be cheaply derived from apple pomace – a widely available waste product left over from the apple juice processing industry.
Apple oligosaccharides are more effective than chemo drug at killing colon cancer cells
University researchers in Xi’an, China isolated polysaccharides (pectin and other fibers) from apple pomace and treated them with natural pectinase to break down their molecules into smaller oligosaccharides (which have only three to ten sugar units per molecule).