Guanabana (Annona muricata), also known as soursop and graviola, is a tropical evergreen tree. The fruit and the leaves of the guanabana tree are used in traditional medicine. Guanabana possesses unique phytochemicals known as Annonaceous acetogenins, which showed antitumor activities.
Guanabana Cancer Benefits and Experiments
Guanabana (graviola) contains chemicals called annonaceous acetogenins, which are thought to be the active component. Annonaceous acetogenins are, powerful antioxidants that have been found to help avoid and treat illness. In lab experiments, guanabana selectively hunts down and kills 12 different types of cancer cells including colon, breast, prostate, pancreatic, and lung cancer. However there haven’t been any large scale studies in humans.
In 1997, researches at “Purdue University” proved that annonaceous acetogenins appeared especially effective at destroying cells
that had survived chemotherapy. A study conducted at “Purdue University”, showed that the acetogenins can selectively inhibit the growth of cancer cells and furthermore inhibit the growth of tumor cells resistant to doxorubicin, respecting the integrity of cells healthy tissue. Many of the annonaceous acetogenins have a cytotoxicity with ED50 values as low as 10-9 ug/ml. In other study performed by experts at the “Purdue University”, it was demonstrated that the acetogenins of graviola are very strong to have an ED50 of up to 10 to 9 micrograms per milliliter, resulting to have about 10,000 times the power of adriamycin.
In a 2002 study performed by Taiwanese scientists and reported in the Journal of Natural Products, the guanabana extract showed the ability to kill liver cancer cells. Annonaceous acetogenins (guanabana extract) were influential against the growth of Adriamycin – resistant human mammary adenocarcinoma by blocking access of cancer cells to ATP and by inhibiting the actions of plasma membrane glycoprotein. A research reported in the July 2011 edition of “Nutrition and Cancer” showed that guanabana extract inhibits EGF receptor production and slows the growth of human breast cancer cells cultured in test tubes and grafted onto mice. According to a study reported in the Nov 2010 edition of Molecules, the A. acetogenins in guanabana decreased the proliferation of lung cancer and laryngeal cells in the lab. The recent study, conducted by a research team at the “Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center“, shows that guanabana kills pancreatic cancer cells by inhibiting cellular metabolism.
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