“Devil’s Apple” Shows Early Promise as Cancer Treatment

July 26, 2006 - In a small biotech lab in Australia, researches have been stumped by a little mouse they call M5.  It seems that the little creature has been twice infected with the asbestos-related disease mesothelioma and has twice refused to die. 

The cause of his longevity?  Researchers say it’s the extracted compounds from a fruit known as Devil’s Apple, a noxious weed that was introduced from Africa to Queensland at the turn of the 19th century.

From the compounds of the fruit, researchers at Solbec Laboratories in Perth, Australia developed a drug called “coramsine”, which not only cured the mouse of the disease once but kept him from being re-infected after the disease was introduced a second time.

An article is Cosmos magazine noted that the same results were observed in limited trials of terminally ill patients whose tumors either shrunk or disappeared.

"M5 represents a significant step in our mesothelioma research. It did not mean it would work in humans, but it did not mean it wouldn't,” said general manager David Sparling.

Sparling said the focus now was repeating the M5 test results in national clinical trials over the next 12 to 24 months. The tests would not be conducted on mesothelioma patients, but rather on two other aggressive killers - malignant melanoma and renal cell carcinoma.

He said the trials will take the company's drug therapy treatment from phase one to phase two trials, proving efficacy in people. They will involve up to 60 patients with malignant melanoma and up to 60 patients with renal cell carcinoma from hospitals in every state and territory.  If successful, Solbec moves to Phase Three - taking the drug to the marketplace.

The Cosmos article notes that Devil’s Apple is known in scientific circles as Solanum linnaeanum.  Its active compound, coramsine, “consists of two main compounds, the glycoalkaloids solasonine and solamargine, which act by binding to a receptor on the cancer cell and rupturing the cell wall, causing the cell to die.”

Studies at the University of Western Australia have shown that the compound is against ovarian cancer, renal cancer, melanoma, mesothelioma, colorectal and colon cancer, gastric cancer, bladder cancer, various skin cancers and prostate cancer.