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ScienceDaily_2013 18118.txt

#Rice-cell cocktail tough on cancer cells, nice to normal cellsjuice from rice cells can knock out two kinds of human cancer cells as well or better than the potent anticancer drug Taxol a Michigan Technological University scientist has discovered in laboratory tests. Plus it does something Taxol can't do: it plays nice with normal cells. Biologist Ramakrishna Wusirika and his team made their anticancer cocktail with blobs of rice stem-cells called calli which they cultured in their lab using seeds of the garden-variety rice plant Oryza sativa. Then they collected secretions from these calli and applied them to colon and kidney cancer cells in the lab. After 96 hours of exposure to a 20-to-1 rice callus solution 95 percent of the kidney cancer cells were killed along with 83 percent of the colon cancer cells while normal lung cells were unharmed virtually. Taxol was lethal to the cancer cells too but it also killed a significant number of normal cells. Wusirika thinks the rice callus culture may be attacking cancer with the same sort of plant chemicals that make vegetables so healthy to eat. They are full of metabolic compounds that are good for us he says. We think that's what is killing the cancer. Next Wusirika would like to try the rice callus solution on prostate lung and breast cancer cells the most common types of cancer in the US. We think it will work with all of them but we need to find out he said. He also wants to determine which of the compounds released by the rice callus have cancer-killing properties and how they work against tumor cells. Or he notes it's possible that the suite of biochemicals found in the callus solution work as a team to fight cancer. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Michigan Technological University. The original article was written by Marcia Goodrich. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e

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