Lung cancer: from tea leaves nanoparticles capable of "killing" diseased cells

According to a new study, tea leaves 'kill' lung cancer.

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Tea could be the unexpected answer to lung cancer. The nanoparticles obtained from the tea leaves would be able to kill up to 80% of cancer cells. It is the discovery that happened by pure chance that promises to pave the way towards simpler, less expensive and less toxic therapies.

To arrive at these conclusions was a team of scholars from Swansea University, UK, KS Rangasamy College of Technology and Bharathiar University, India, who were actually testing a new method to produce a type of nanoparticle. called "quantum dots". These are small particles that measure less than 10 nanometers (consider that a human hair has a thickness of 40 thousand nanometers).

Once again, tea could prove to be an effective anticancer, like green tea extract against pancreatic cancer. In this case, although nanoparticles are already used in health care, quantum dots attract attention, proving to be useful in various fields: they are used in advanced photovoltaic systems, in the latest generation of televisions and in the medical field. as a "dye", thanks to fluorescence, to highlight tumors.

Well, since traditional quantum dots are produced chemically and the process is expensive and can often even create toxic products, Pitchaimuthu and colleagues hoped to obtain "harmless" quantum dots starting from tea leaves, which also already contain a ' wide variety of compounds, including polyphenols, amino acids, vitamins and antioxidants, after treating them with two different compounds, cadmium sulfate and sodium sulfide.

They then allowed the solution to incubate, a process that causes quantum dots to form, and then applied the dots to lung cancer cells.

In doing so, they realized that the nanoparticles were capable of penetrate into the microscopic pores of diseased cells and kill them with a cytotoxic effect. Quantum dots from tea leaves, which are revealed to be the simplest, least expensive and least toxic method for field research, would inhibit the growth of lung cancer cells, destroying up to 80% of them.

A new avenue to explore for the development of new cancer treatments? This is certainly a great result which, however, according to the Anglo-Indian scholars, will have to be followed by further investigations before the possible marketing of potential drugs based on these nanoparticles.