The cure for cancer?

By Catherine Masters

medical reporter

New Zealand's humble green-lipped mussel is offering hope to cancer sufferers worldwide.

Australian researchers have discovered that an extract from the mussel, called lyprinol, kills human cancer cells in the laboratory.

They hope the natural dietary marine supplement has beaten scientists and drug companies around the world in the race to find a non-toxic chemical to stop cancer.

In the next few weeks, more than 100 Adelaide men with prostate cancer and women with breast cancer will take part in world-first clinical trials to gauge the marine extract's effect on cancer cells in the body. Lyprinol has been hailed as a remarkable help for sufferers from the inflammatory illnesses arthritis and asthma.

But its action against cancer was "stumbled" upon by an Australian scientist, Dr Henry Betts, from Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide.

He has shown that lyprinol is a potent inhibitor of two cell pathways that cause inflammation in humans and animals.

After reviewing medical research papers on cancer, Dr Betts found more than 600 references indicating that the same cell pathways were also involved in cancer.

One pathway - which produces a compound called 5-HETE - is responsible for cancer-cell growth.

The second pathway - the "production factory" for 12-HETE - is responsible for the deadly spread of cancer cells.

"Nearly every one of the 600-odd peer-reviewed papers pleaded for someone to successfully develop a drug to inhibit these pathways so that cancer could be attacked at these two stages," Dr Betts said.

"Time and time again, there was the same plea from researchers: somebody find a clinically critical inhibitor of these pathways and we will have something that can be used in the treatment of cancer."

He ordered live cancer cells and began growing them, then treated them with various strengths of lyprinol - and found that lyprinol inhibited the cancer.

"We would see the cells proliferating and then see them stop."

He said he was 90 per cent sure the extract would work in the body. "This is the most exciting discovery of my career. If I was diagnosed with cancer I would take as much lyprinol as I could hold down."

Melbourne-based family company Maclab, which has a factory in Nelson, will reap the benefits if the trials are successful.

An owner, Jim Broadbent, said the company had been chasing the cure for arthritis for 18 years - "and look what happened ..."

He had seen cancer cells growing in the laboratory and to watch them dying was "magnificent."

But he was concerned that New Zealand would not be able to supply enough mussels for world demand and a new supply would have to be developed.

"The Government will have to make some hard decisions.

"If the rest of the world says, `We demand this material because this is going to help so many people,' how do you turn around and say, `Sorry, you can't have it'?"

The Minister for Food and Fibre, John Luxton, said that if trials were successful, expansion would be rapid in an industry which already equalled wine in size.

"I think we need to treat it pretty cautiously at this stage and await further information that proves it clinically works in humans as has been suggested."
But he warned that if successful, the price for a meal of mussels would probably go up.

- Additional research by Susan Jennison