Discovered through animal experiments: a food coloring may help treat brain cancer

  Japanese researchers recently announced through animal experiments that they found that red food coloring can effectively treat malignant glioma. Based on this, it is expected that new therapeutic agents will be developed in the future. Glioma is one of brain tumors. The treatment of malignant glioma is very difficult. It is difficult to completely remove the affected area through surgery. It should also be used with drugs.

  However, the effects of existing drugs are not satisfactory and need to be developed. Better medicine. Researchers from the Institute of Basic Biology in Japan and other researchers have published a new issue of "Science Reports" in the United Kingdom. It is known that malignant glioma cells have an enzyme called PTPRZ, which may aggravate cancer. Therefore, I report that it is about 2.6. We searched thousands of compounds for a substance that can inhibit this enzyme, and found that a low molecular weight compound called SCB4380 is effective.

  This compound is used as a red pigment in Japanese food and cosmetics. The direct use of this substance does not allow it to pass through the cell membrane of malignant gliomas, but researchers have found that this problem can be overcome by encapsulating the dye with liposomes. The researchers conducted experiments on 16 rats with malignant gliomas of the brain and injected the dye encapsulated in liposomes into the brain. This reduced the size of the tumor after 7 weeks and did not inject the dye. It was found that only the size of the control group was reduced.

  Mouse tumors account for about half of the volume. The researchers said that they will continue to work on this basis to develop new drugs that can effectively treat malignant glioma.