We all know by now that breast milk is liquid gold to babies and provides growing infants with the perfectly tailored nutrition.
But now some Swedish scientists have found that the benefits don’t end there, after accidentally discovering that breast milk contains a substance that kills tumour cells.
It was Professor Catharina Svanborg, an immunologist at Lund University in Sweden, who made the chance discovery when working on antibiotics.
“We were looking for novel antimicrobial agents, and new breast milk is a very good source of these,” Svanborg explains to the DailyMail. “During one experiment we needed human cells and bacteria to be present, and we chose human tumour cells for practical reasons. To our amazement, when we added this compound of milk, the tumour cells died. It was a totally serendipitous discovery.”
To everyone’s amazement, trials in patients with bladder cancer have already yielded promising results and researchers believe the compound breast milk contains – nicknamed Hamlet – will also help tackle bowel cancer and cervical cancer.
“There’s something magical about Hamlet’s ability to target tumour cells and kill them,” Svanborg explains.
She explains that it seems these cells can hone in on cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed – meaning, of course, it has none of the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy.
Professor Svanborg explains that human breast milk contains a protein called alpha-lactalbumin, which is transformed into a cancer-fighting agent when in the gut.
The substance attacks cancer cells in numerous ways – first evading the cell’s outer defences, then targeting the ‘power station’ mitochondria and the ‘instruction manual’ nucleus. These actions essentially cut off the cell’s energy source and ‘programme’ it to commit suicide, in a process called apoptosis.
According to the press release, early trials in patients with bladder cancer show those injected with Hamlet start shedding dead tumour cells in their urine within days.
A full-scale trial pitting Hamlet against a placebo ‘dummy drug’ is now planned.
