Green Tea Lowers Risk of Pancreatic Cancer, Study

Green tea, one of the healthiest drinks in the world, lowers the risk of pancreatic cancer.

Green tea has often been touted as a miracle drink that helps ward off diseases, including cancer. Adding to this list of extensive benefits is the new study that claims green tea and its extracts help lower the risk of pancreatic cancer by suppressing the expression of an enzyme that is linked with cancer.

In the current study, researchers from the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbour-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed) found that an active biologic constituent in green tea called EGCG, alters the metabolism of pancreatic cancer cells by suppressing LDHA, the enzyme that is linked with cancer.

The researchers found that 'oxamate', an enzyme inhibitor, lowers the LDHA activity that functioned in a similar manner.  Apart from this, the inhibitor also disrupts the pancreatic cancer cells' metabolic system.

"Scientists had believed they needed a molecular mechanism to treat cancer, but this study shows that they can change the metabolic system and have an impact on cancer," said Wai-Nang Lee the lead researcher. "By explaining how green tea's active component could prevent cancer, this study will open the door to a whole new area of cancer research and help us understand how other foods can prevent cancer or slow the growth of cancerous cells."

With the help of metabolic profiling techniques the researchers found that EGCG disturbed the balance of the flux, rate of turnover of molecules through a metabolic pathway, throughout the cellular metabolic network.

Thus they conclude that EGCG and oxamate lower the risk of cancer by inhibiting the activity of LDHA.

"This is an entirely new way of looking at metabolism," said Dr. Lee. "It is no longer a case of glucose goes in and energy comes out. Now we understand how cancer cell metabolism can be disrupted, and we can examine how we can use this knowledge to try to alter the course of cancer or prevent cancer."

The finding was documented in Metabolomics.