Apple Peel May Hold the Key to Fight Cancer

According to research conducted by Dr. Rui Hai Liu, Cornell Associate Professor (Food Science), apple peel may hold the they to fight and prevent cancer. Rui Hai Liu has been able to isolate and identify many compounds in the apple peel that have the ability to inhibit or destroy cancer cells in laboratory systems.

These compounds, known chemically as triterpenoids, have been shown to have strong antiproliferative activity and may be, at least partially, responsible for the observed anti-cancer activity of apple peel. Previous work at Cornell had shown that apples have anticancer activity against some of the most common types of cancer (liver, colon and breast cancer). Now, researchers are asking themselves, is the apple peel responsible for this anti-cancer activity?

The research has been published in the premier food science journal Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry and details the methodology used to proof that apple peel has antiproliferative and anti-cancer properties.

Liu and colleagues isolated individual compound from more than 200 pounds of apples. They identified the compounds, its structures, and tested its anti-cancer properties in a laboratory system. Apple peel and apple pulp are rich in many phytochemicals that are proved to be cancer fighting compounds such as flavonoids, phenolic acids, etc. Many of these cancer fighting compounds have well known activities against breast cancer.

Three new unknown compounds are said to be identified in this study. The new 3 compounds are of the family of triterpenoids, which basically means that they have 3 terpene rings in its structure. We will not go into the specifics of the chemical structures since you could read that (if interested) in the original paper, but what really matters from this study is that these triterpenoids have a strong anti-cancer activity tested in a variety of cancer cell lines such as liver cancer cell lines, breast cancer cell lines, and colon cancer cell lines.

An apple a day may hold the key to fight cancer

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