Food Preservative Nisin May Be Supercure for Cancer

It’s ironic, and for some extremely funny when scientists find something in the last place they’d be looking. This is what happened to a team of researchers from the University Of Michigan School Of Dentistry, as they discovered that food preservative nisin may be supercure for cancer.

• The results of the study will be published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy
• Nisin is a very common and naturally occurring food preservative
• Products containing nisin are a sanitizer used for lactating cows and several pharmaceuticals which fight mastitis and infections
• Nisin is also great at fighting antibiotic resistant super bacteria
• So far, no bacteria has been found to be able to resist nisin

As it turns out, the natural occurring food preservative found mostly in dairy products may be the answer we’ve all been waiting for in the fight against cancer.

But not only has nisin proven to be extraordinary at fighting tumors and cancerous cells, it has also proven to be of invaluable help in fighting off several types of antibiotic resistant bacteria, like the highly dangerous Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.

But it doesn’t stop there, as according to the researchers behind the study, no human or animal bacteria has been found to be able to fight off the effects of nisin.

According to the scientists, this is because the preservative sticks itself to a static area of the bacteria, thus gaining the chance to fight it off before it develops resistance; additionally, the nisin kills what are known as biofilms – groups of bacteria stacking up together that can thwart antibiotics.

In order to test their findings, the scientists fed a group of rats a very concentrated dose of nisin, of 800mg/kg, which is between 21 and 3200 times that usually found in regular food.

For comparison, the minimum amount typically added to food for preservative purposes is 0.25 mg/kg, while the maximum encountered is 37.5 mg/kg.

It was found that in the mice that were fed the highly concentrated nisin milkshake, up to 70%-80% of all head and neck tumors were gone after only nine weeks.

Now, there are quite a few more steps left, but researchers are quite confident in their findings. What’s left is to complete the study on mice, start testing on other animals, come up with a more efficient way to supply the medicine, and eventually start testing on humans.

And even though that might take a few years, we might actually be on the right path for once.

Image source: Wikimedia