An ‘unkillable’ weed Andropogon virginicus that has spread slowly up North America and into Canada, even now appearing in Australia and Japan, seems to possess properties that may help fight diseases from diabetes to cancer.
The weed grows up to seven feet tall and can be burned but grows back, it is immune to herbicides, it damages land and crops, it disrupts the growth of other plants and to date it had no economic value, that is until a worldwide research study showed the power of its ingredients.
The extracts of Andropogon virginicus seem to possess some special properties and have already been shown to be promising sources of antioxidant, anti- diabetic, anti-tyrosinase, and antitumor agents.
The International Study, authored by Tran Dang Xuan, associate professor at the Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering at Hiroshima University found some surprising properties. First there were very high levels of flavonoids in the samples they extracted from the weed. These plant chemicals have significant antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. But there were clearly other chemicals not yet extracted and when these were tested against a variety of cell lines, the extracted plant chemicals bonded to free radicals.
The team then applied the extracted chemicals to a line of the rare blood cancer, chronic myelogenous leukemia and the extract killed the cancer cells. Tyrosinase, one of the active ingredients, has a number of important actions, for example in anti-ageing of the skin, and in type 2 diabetes prevention.
The next step, according to Xuan, is to isolate all the individual ingredients. Maybe one will naturally kill cancer cells
Go to: Blushwood berry kills cancer cells
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Reference
- La Hoang Anh, Nguyen Van Quan, Vu Quang Lam, Yu Iuchi, Akiyoshi Takami, Rolf Teschke, Tran Dang Xuan. Antioxidant, Anti-tyrosinase, Anti-α-amylase, and Cytotoxic Potentials of the Invasive Weed Andropogon virginicus. Plants, 2020; 10 (1): 69 DOI: 10.3390/plants10010069