Drugs Made from Pine Bark can Help Treat Melanoma: Study

Compounds found in pine bark can help treat melanoma, according to a study.

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer affecting nearly 61,000 people in the U.S. annually.  So far the medications used can temporarily shield against the disease that mostly recurs.  The skin cancer cells develop drug resistance by escaping certain proteins in it.  

Scientists from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine examined nearly 480 organic substances and discovered leelamine present in the bark of pine trees can block pathways in cancer cell's circuitry causing them to die. Their study tested the drug efficacy on lab cultured skin cancer cells and mice with tumors.

"To a cancer cell, resistance is like a traffic problem in its circuitry," said Gavin Robertson, study author and professor of pharmacology, pathology, dermatology and surgery and director of the Penn State Hershey Melanoma Center in a news release.

"Cancer cells see treatment with a single drug as a road closure and use a detour or other roads to bypass the closure."

About 60 percent of anti-cancer drugs have been extracted from natural sources like plants, animals, marine elements and micro-organisms. These are proven to be very effective in treating several forms of cancer. The leelamine was found to simultaneously shut out various protein passages like PI3K, MAPK and STAT3 in skin cancer cells that are associated with the disease progression in 70 percent of the melanoma cases.

In addition it was noted that pine bark chemical inhibits the supply of cholesterol across the cancer cell that is needed for survival and communication with other cells. However, the leelamine does not harm the healthy cells that do not have increased activity in cancer causing pathways. The drug curbed the development of tumor in mice and did not cause any adverse reaction.

"The cholesterol in a cancer cell is not like the cholesterol in our blood that causes heart disease," said Robertson. "The cancer cells need it for the high protein pathway activity and it cannot be shut down by statins, like Lipitor, that lower serum cholesterol."  

The authors believe in investigating further before testing its potency on humans.

More information is available online in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.