Scientists in Sweden discovered that breast milk contains an ingredient that kills tumor cells.
The use of breast milk in the fight against cancer has been waiting for more than five years, and now it has started to give its first results. Research conducted on bladder cancer patients has already yielded promising results. The researchers believe that a substance in breast milk they have named "Hamlet" is helping these patients, and in the future it will help in the treatment of colon and cervical cancer.
According to laboratory research, "Hamlet" kills 40 different types of cancer cells, and it is significant that it does not kill healthy cells, which means that it does not cause severe side effects like the current drugs used in chemotherapy.
Professor Katarina Svanborg, on whose initiative this research was carried out, said that there is something "magical about the substance Hamlet that finds tumor cells and kills them".
"Breast milk contains the protein alpha-lactalbumin, which is transformed in the stomach into a substance that fights cancer," said Svanborg, who works as an immunologist at Sweden's Lund University.
Svanborg and her team came to this discovery quite by accident. During one experiment, they needed human cells and bacteria to investigate the antibiotic properties of breast milk. For practical reasons, they took tumor cells.
"When we added breast milk to the tumor cells, to our great surprise, the cells died. That accidental discovery was a real stroke of luck," said Svanborg, reports klix.ba.
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