Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/1219209
www.AbbysHealthFood.com - Issue 41 | Page 13 "Once again, this work demonstrates the irreplaceable value of le ng researchers follow their scien fic noses wherever it leads them," Dang adds. The authors do cau on that while vitamin C is s ll essen al for good health, this study is preliminary and people should not rush out and buy bulk supplies of an oxidants as a means of cancer preven on. The Johns Hopkins inves gators discovered the surprise an oxidant mechanism while looking at mice implanted with either human lymphoma (a blood cancer) or human liver cancer cells. Both of these cancers produce high levels of free radicals that can be suppressed by feeding the mice supplements of an oxidants, either vitamin C or N-acetylcysteine (NAC). However, when the Hopkins team examined cancer cells from cancer-implanted mice not fed the an oxidants, they no ced the absence of any significant DNA damage. "Clearly, if DNA damage was not in play as a cause of the cancer, then whatever the an oxidants were doing to help was also not related to DNA damage," says Ping Gao, Ph.D, lead author of the paper. That conclusion led Gao and Dang to suspect that some other mechanism was involved, such as a protein known to be dependent on free radicals called HIF-1 (hypoxia-induced factor), which was discovered over a decade ago by Hopkins researcher and co-author Gregg Semenza, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Program in Vascular Cell Engineering. Indeed, they found that while this protein was abundant in untreated cancer cells taken from the mice, it disappeared in vitamin C-treated cells taken from similar animals. "When a cell lacks oxygen, HIF-1 helps it compensate," explains Dang. "HIF-1 helps an oxygen-starved cell convert sugar to energy without using oxygen and also ini ates the construc on of new blood vessels to bring in a fresh oxygen supply." Some rapidly growing tumors consume enough energy to easily suck out the available oxygen in their vicinity, making HIF-1 absolutely cri cal for their con nued survival. But HIF-1 can only operate if it has a supply of free radicals. An oxidants remove these free radicals and stop HIF-1, and the tumor, in its tracks. The authors confirmed the importance of this "hypoxia protein" by crea ng cancer cells with a gene c variant of HIF-1 that did not require free radicals to be stable. In these cells, an oxidants no longer had any cancer-figh ng power. The research was funded by the Na onal Ins tutes of Health. Authors on the paper are Dean Felsher of Stanford; and Gao, Huafeng Zhang, Ramani Dinavahi, Feng Li, Yan Xiang, Venu Raman, Zaver Bhujwalla, Linzhao Cheng, Jonathan Pevsner, Linda Lee, Gregg Semenza and Dang of Johns Hopkins. Solgar's Commitment to Excellence Live Vibrantly. 7 ingredients that works in 7 days for Joint health mobility and flexibility Solgar has been innova ng and producing fine quality nutri onal supplements since 1947. Our ongoing mission is to provide consumers with top- quality, innova ve, science-based nutri onal supplements to support their total health and well-being. We are commi ed to exclusively distribu ng our products in the natural products industry where knowledgeable retailers worldwide can guide consumers through the vast array of choices. TampaDentalCare.c m 1201 West Linebaugh Avenue Tampa, Florida 33612 813.933.5365 David F. Doering, D.D.S. • PLLC doeringfamilydental