The use of magnolia as treatment for advanced prostate cancer intrigued me after someone recently posted about a new discovery coming out of the U of TX. I couldn't find that info, but I found this fairly recent article. -quite maddening when I read this part under "conclusions":
"Various animal studies strongly advocate the potential role of MAG in controlling the growth of different tumors. However, not even one clinical study has investigated the efficacy of MAG. As MAG is obtained from Mother Nature, it could drastically economize the expenditure associated with this ever-growing dreadful disease"
The specific info on Prostate cancer is Chinese to me.
So this makes me wonder what the safest and best magnolia bark supplement is!
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
Magnolol: A Neolignan from the Magnolia Family for the Prevention and Treatment of Cancer
Published online 2018 Aug 10
"Several natural compounds have proved their potential against this dreadful disease so far. Magnolol is a hydroxylated biphenyl isolated from the root and stem bark of Magnolia tree. Magnolol can efficiently prevent or inhibit the growth of various cancers originating from different organs such as brain, breast, cervical, colon, liver, lung, prostate, skin, etc. Considering these perspectives, the current review primarily focuses on the fascinating role of magnolol against various types of cancers, and the source and chemistry of magnolol and the molecular mechanism underlying the targets of magnolol are discussed. This review proposes magnolol as a suitable candidate that can be appropriately designed and established into a potent anti-cancer drug..........".
"6.9. Prostate Cancer
Approximately 1.1 million new cases of prostate cancer occurred in 2012, and this is the second most frequently diagnosed cancer in men worldwide [1,160]. Several preclinical studies have shown the efficacy of MAG against prostate cancer. MAG treatment of PC-3 cells can potentially induce apoptosis by decreasing the concentration of phosphorylated AKT and the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signal transduction pathway. Further, it decreased phosphorylation of serine 136 of Bad protein, assisted in the translocation of Bax to mitochondria and promoted the release of cyt-c, which in turn activated downstream caspase cascade to induce apoptosis [152]. MAG diminishes cell proliferation activity by autophagy and inhibits angiogenesis in PC3 cells [121]. Hwang E.S. et al. reported that MAG suppressed the metastatic property of PC-3 cells via downregulation of MMP-2, -9 both at the transcriptional and translational levels [153]. In vitro studies on androgen insensitive prostate cancer cell lines DU 145 and PC3 cells disclosed that MAG treatment causes cytotoxicity and affects the cell cycle progression by arresting the cells at the G2/M phase of the cell cycle by suppressing the expression of cell cycle regulatory proteins such as cyclin-A, -B1, -D1 and -E, and kinases like CDK-2 and CDK-4 [55]. The same research team performed another preclinical study on LNCap and PC3 cells and revealed that treatment with MAG downregulated the expression of Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and associated proteins such as insulin-like growth factor binding Protein-5 (IGFBP-5) and IGFBP-4 (Table 1) [151]."