Anti-Cancer Properties of Green Teas

An article in New Scientist suggest that green tea protects against a range of cancers, including lung, prostate and breast cancer. According to Dr. Hirofumi Tachibana’s team at Kyushu University in Japan, the reason cited is the antioxidant epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG).Their research showed that growth of human lung cancer cells that have a cell receptor called 67 LR is slowed significantly after drinking just two or three cups of green tea, which contains EGCG.
According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, in laboratory studies using animals, catechins inactivated oxidants before cell damage occurred, reduced the number and size of tumors, and inhibited the growth of cancer cells.

Another study from the Oxford Life Science journal Carcinogenesis showing a capacity of green tea in combination with tamoxifen is effective in suppressing breast cancer growth in human breast cancer tumors and in animal experiments in mice.

In 1994 the Journal of the National Cancer Institute published the results of an epidemiological study indicating that drinking green tea reduced the risk of esophageal cancer in Chinese men and women by nearly sixty percent.

University of Purdue researchers recently concluded that a compound in green tea inhibits the growth of cancer cells.

Earlier this year, researchers from the University of Rochester in New York presented data at a conference on diet and cancer in Washington, D.C. suggesting that EGCG targets a particular protein, HSP90, that is present in higher levels in cancer cells than in normal cells.

At a meeting in April 2007 of the American Association for Cancer Research, Italian researchers showed that men at high risk of prostate cancer who took the equivalent of three to four cups of green tea a day were less likely to develop the cancer than similar men given a placebo.
Hasan Mukhtar, a biochemist and professor of cancer research at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine has shown that green tea catechins block a substance called insulin-like growth factor-1, thus thwarting the ability of prostate cancer cells to grow.