Eat your Oranges!

Eat your Oranges!

            From a current publishing in Science there is new found data that vitamin C can be used to help prevent cancer and prolong survival rate.  They found in mice that vitamin C can kill tumor cells, which are specific to certain mutations.  In the 1970’s and 80’s Linus Pauling and other researchers were trying to figure out how to show vitamin C could cure many diseases, including cancer but they were ridiculed by fellow scientists because there was little proof.  But within the past five years there have been findings that intravenous vitamin C can prolong the survival of patients with pancreatic and ovarian cancer, when also treated with chemotherapy. 

            Vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin and uses passive diffusion to cross the plasma membrane.  Oxidized vitamin C, dehydroascorbic acid (DHA), is a key player in Jihye Yun’s research into its effect on free radicals within the cell.  Certain colon cancers arising from mutations in genes KRAS or BRAF yield large quantities of GLUT1, which aids in transporting glucose through the plasma membrane.  GLUT1 also transports DHA into the cell as well and once in the cell DHA inhibits the cells ability to reduce free radicals.  For normal cells this is harmful but researchers have found that especially for colon cancers specified by KRAS and BRAF mutations it is an opportunity to attack the cancer.  By administering high doses of vitamin C and targeting tumor cells it causes a high enough concentration of free radicals to destroy the cells, specifically inhibiting the enzymes needed to metabolize glucose and therefore halting energy production. 

            Using vitamin C as a treatment has a lot of potential because colon cancers with KRAS mutations make up around 40% of patients.  Furthermore, KRAS mutations have also been found to be the culprit of certain pancreatic cancers.  Also a fun fact from the findings is that when they mentioned high doses of vitamin C, it is the equivalent of eating 300 oranges.  Moral of the story is to eat oranges, not only are they yummy but they also can help prevent cancer.

Reference: news.sciencemag.org/chemistry/2015/11/vitamin-c-kills-tumor-cells-hard-treat-mutation