LONDON (Reuters) - A study of a milk-based chemical called alpha-1h inhibits tumors, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported.
The substance is found only in breast milk and helps to break tumors into fragments in the body, allowing cancer patients to pass through the urine.
The first results from an early trial involving 40 patients with incurable bladder cancer found that all 20 people who received the real drug instead of placebo in six batches over 22 days removed complete tumor cells in their urine.
In a smaller experiment at the Mötul University Hospital in Prague, Czech Republic, under the supervision of scientists at the Swedish University of Lund, nine bladder cancer patients were given five daily doses a week earlier for surgery to remove their tumor.
It was noted that eight of them began to pass tumor cells in their urine only two hours after giving them medicine, decreased the size of their tumors and pain, and proved that, unlike other chemotherapy methods, there was no damage in the surrounding tissue.
Professor Katharina Svanburg, who discovered that solvents in breast milk kill cancer cells in 1995 while at Lund University, which founded the Hamlet Pharma Limited Real Estate Testing Company, said she hopes to be able to break up many types of tumors.
Alpha-1H helps produce lactose, a milk sugar essential for feeding children and turns milk into a liquid.
The drug has been shown to kill more than 40 types of cancer cells in animal experiments, and laboratory evidence has been shown for its effects on many different types of cancer cells, such as brain tumors and colon cancer, as well as bladder cancer in humans.