According to a new report by the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, some of the natural chemicals that can be found in red wine enhance the ability of common cancer drugs to suppress breast cancer cells.
After doing extensive research on the matter, researchers noted that when the drug rapamycin is coupled with the compound resveratrol, the drug is able to be a more effective tumor suppressant against breast cancer cells that are looking to expand. Further, while some cancerous cells are able to develop a resistance to rapamycin alone, adding resveratrol makes for an anti-tumor effect.
"Rapamycin has been used in clinical trials as a cancer treatment. Unfortunately, after a while, the cancer cells develop resistance to rapamycin," the reserachers said in a press release. "Our findings show that resveratrol seems to mitigate rapamycin-induced drug resistance in breast cancers, at least in the laboratory. If these observations hold true in the clinic setting, then enjoying a glass of red wine or eating a bowl of boiled peanuts – which has a higher resveratrol content than red wine – before rapamycin treatment for cancer might be a prudent approach."
Resveratrol, of course, is generally found in the skin of red grapes.
In the tests, the utilization of low concentrations of resveratrol and rapamycin led to as much as 50 percent reduction in tumor growth.
More information on the findings is available in the Journal Cancer Letters.
