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Saturday, October 25, 2014

Vitamins and Pancreatic Cancer

 The year was 1535, the winter brutal on the St. Lawrence River...  And Jacques Cartier was up to his hip boots in dying sailors.  A strange disease had taken hold on his ship and most of his men were in misery... bone-deep fatigue, frightening skin rashes, bleeding gums, partial paralysis... Many feared witchcraft, or spells cast on them by the native populace...

As ice froze his ship to the shoreline, so to Cartier's chances of making it back to France.  With no where else to turn he sought the natives help or risked losing his whole crew...

The locals boiled the needles of the tall White Cedar trees that lined the banks and made a tea for the crew to drink. Some feared it was poison, but the desperate few who drank it down almost immediately began the return to good health.

Jacques Cartier was astounded at the miraculous turn-around... Little did he know that he had just witnessed a simple, natural cure for Scurvy.  The needles of the cedar trees are chock full of Vitamin C.  And Vitamin C deficiency is what his sailors were experiencing.

It is estimated that between the years 1500 and 1800, scurvy claimed the lives of at least 2 million sailors.

And all for the lack of Vitamin C...

*  *  *  *  *

Today, could a cure for pancreatic cancer be as simple as a Vitamin Deficiency???

In yesterday's post on Immunotherapies, we learned there are clear advances in new trials to battle pancreatic cancer.  One of the things that these clinical trials has exposed is that the fight against pancreatic cancer isn't just a fight to kill the tumor, it's the fight against a tumor in a setting hardwired to resist treatment.

Let me explain a little better...

Scientists have found that pancreatic cancer tumors have an unusually thick layer of scar tissue, called the stroma, that builds up around the cancer and prevents drugs from getting through.  This scar tissue, or stroma, is also forming a barrier to the bodies own immune cells, preventing them from getting in and attacking the cancer.

Pancreatic Cancer is one hard to treat cancer... ok, I'm stating the obvious, but really, isn't cancer bad enough without learning that it's put up a fortress to protect itself?!

So, there are new trials on the horizon (and some that are actually in clinical trial) that are seeking to break through that barrier... with Vitamins!

2 Vitamins in Particular... A and D

Here's the scoop.

In a current study on Vitamin A, researchers found that pancreatic cancer patients are often deficient in Vitamin A.  In their trial, they restored the levels of Vitamin A, and they found that more T-Cells (these are the good, immune-busting guys from yesterday's post!) got past the stroma and into the cancer, effectively attaching the tumor from within.

Unfortunately, this study right now is being conducted in mice...not humans... but this is a step in the right direction.  They may be on to something...

The studies on Vitamin D are very similar.  Researchers are using a synthetic form of Vitamin D to knock down the barrier wall of cells surrounding the pancreatic tumors and opening a path for chemotherapy drugs to destroy the cancer.  The synthetic Vitamin D is called Paricalcitol, and has also been tested with good success in mice... but it has also advanced to the human testing stage with trials set to begin at Penn Medicine.

As an interesting side note, the reason that a synthetic Vitamin D is being used is because the natural occuring Vitamin D is "shredded" by the cancer and degrades too fast for it to be effective in knocking down the barrier wall.

Vitamins... Who knew?  Well, probably a lot of very wise people... like the indigenous tribe of locals that helped Jacques Cartier's crew recover from the deathly grip of scurvy.  It's just a tragedy that it took another 2 centuries for this "cure" to become widely used.  Over 2 million sailors lost during that time, when all they needed was the juice of a lemon or the taste of an orange...

Might Vitamins make a difference in Pancreatic Cancer treatment?  Is the Cure staring us in the face?  Vitamins... Would that they could, a whisper of prayer... the promise of Hope.

Knowing that we cannot allow centuries to pass before that cure is found!

In Grace, Always,
                         Jane



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