Tea Leaves Spell Good Fortune

Component of green tea touted as nontoxic early-stage leukemia treatment

By Samuel Munson

In areas of the world like the Far East, where green tea is a staple, the occurrence of solid tumour cancers is lower. Now, a study published April 2 as an early electronic article in the journal Blood demonstrates the killing power of this brew in chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Chronic B cell lymphocytic leukemia is unpredictable, leading physicians to adopt a "watchful waiting" attitude for patients with the early-stage form of the disease. Some patients live with the cancer for decades and don't require treatment. Others develop an aggressive form of the leukemia, which can lead to a swift death, even with immediate treatment. In such cases, the "watchful waiting" strategy falls short. But this new report hints that a nontoxic early-stage treatment for leukemia may be as close at hand as your teacup.

The study, spear-headed by Dr Neil Kay of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, documents the ability of a component of green tea, epigallocatechin (EGCG), to muck up the flow of information in leukemia cells grown in lab cultures. Without the ability to chemically speak, the cells die.

"We're continuing to look for therapeutic agents that are nontoxic to the patient but kill cancer cells, and this finding with EGCG is an excellent start," stated Dr Kay.

The present study was an extension of earlier work from Dr Kay's group, which showed that leukemia cells grown in lab cultures make and release a specific chemical that's captured by surface receptors on leukemia patients' B cells. Kay and his colleagues wondered if this chemical might make B cells hardier and less likely to die.

Following up on this idea, the researchers found that leukemia cells obtained from seven leukemia patients faired significantly worse when they were grown in the presence of the green tea compound, with more cells dying as more EGCG was added.

More specifically, Kay and his colleagues think that EGCG flexes its chemical muscle by turning off the receptors on the surface of the B cells so that they're unable to receive the communication chemical produced by leukemia cells.

"We may be able to pursue the idea of culling out early-stage patients who have historically not been treated and perhaps use an EGCG-based treatment," said Dr Kay. "That's our next step with our research."

So, in the future, some leukemia patients may find salvation in a nice hot cup of green tea.