Resveratrol Holds Promise for Treatment Resistant Cancer

Associate Scientist at the University of Wisconsin’s Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Dr. Paul van Ginkel has been focusing on natural compounds to treat eye cancer, a type called uveal melanoma.

Uveal melanoma frequently metastasizes, primarily to the liver, and once it spreads it is difficult to treat. Often the cancer has already metastasized by the time the eye tumor is detected. The goal for Dr. van Ginkel and his colleagues was to find non-toxic compounds to help treat the cancer. That led him to resveratrol, a phytochemical found in red grapes and berries.

“We started using resveratrol as a tool to see if it would suppress a gene in uveal melanoma but to our amazement, we were seeing it had a potent effect on the tumor cells so we wanted to see if it could be used as an anti cancer agent.”

Preliminary findings were promising but the researchers were unable to find the right animal model to continue their study. Instead, Dr. van Ginkel used a related type of animal model that was available: neuroblastoma. “Working in an eye lab, we kind of took this left turn to progress our research,” said van Ginkel. Neuroblastoma is an aggressive childhood cancer that also commonly metastasizes.

In a series of studies, Dr. van Ginkel tested resveratrol in mice with neuroblastoma. Mice who consumed resveratrol daily for five weeks had tumors approximately 50 to 80 percent smaller than those in the comparison group. When Dr. van Ginkel increased the level of resveratrol and injected it beside and directly into the tumor, “it was a dramatic effect,” he said. The result was tumor-cell death and smaller tumors.

And while resveratrol lead to tumor-cell death, the surrounding skin tissue and distant organs remained healthy.

Soon after the neuroblastoma study began, Dr. van Ginkel was back to the eye, having developed a suitable animal model. “We wanted to know if in both types of tumor cells – neuroblastoma and uveal melanoma – the same mechanisms were at work, and by and large they are.”

How resveratrol leads to cancer cell death, Dr. van Ginkel saw, relates to the mitochondria. Mitochondria are the cell’s energy sources. Resveratrol disrupts the workings of the membrane, which sparks a cascade of reactions that lead to cell death.

References:
1. American Institute for Cancer Research.