DELICIOUS as guacamole or in a salad, great as a face mask and now a treatment for cancer: the humble avocado is indeed a versatile fruit.
Canadian researcher Paul Spagnuolo from the University of Waterloo has discovered a lipid in avocados that combats acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) by targeting the root of the disease – leukaemia stem cells.
World-wide there are few drug treatments available to patients that target leukaemia stem cells.
AML is a devastating disease that proves fatal within five years for 90 per cent of people aged over 65.
Dr Spagnuolo's avocado-inspired drug could one day significantly increase the life expectancy and quality of life of AML patients.
"The stem cell is really the cell that drives the disease," Dr Spagnuolo said.
"The stem cell is largely responsible for the disease developing and it's the reason why so many people with leukaemia relapse.
"We've performed many rounds of testing to determine how this new drug works at a molecular level and confirmed that it targets stem cells selectively, leaving healthy cells unharmed."
Dr Spagnuolo said it was an exciting time for his lab, which was now pursuing a commercial partnership to take avocatin-B into clinical trials.
"Not only does avocatin-B eliminate the source of AML but its targeted selective effects make it less toxic to the body too."
The drug is still years away from becoming approved for use in oncology clinics, but Dr Spagnuolo is already performing experiments to prepare the drug for a phase 1 clinical trial, which is the first round of trials where people diagnosed with AML could have access to the drug.
The research has been published in Cancer Research, a top 10 oncology journal.
