A conference about ginseng this weekend in Leeds focuses on the growth and sales of the plant touted for its restorative qualities by proponents of natural healing methods and used for hundreds of years in traditional Chinese medicine.
The gathering is titled "American Ginseng Production and Marketing in the 21st Century," and it is sponsored by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Greene County. Topics range from "Woodland Ginseng Production" to "Managing Mice, Voles and Other Critters in Your Woodland Ginseng Garden."
However, one of the sessions at the three-day conference, which starts Friday, provides information for a broader audience - one that may benefit from research that has finally reached the world of Western medicine.
Conference speaker Laura Murphy, professor of physiology in the school of medicine at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, will discuss her discovery two years ago of a component in American ginseng that inhibits the growth of breast and prostate cancer cells.
Murphy received a grant of $300,000 from the U.S. Department of Defense to conduct the studies, which will continue two more years. The first national exposure for her recent findings will come in December when she submits a paper about them at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco. Murphy hopes for further exposure next spring in the nationally distributed "Journal of Experimental Biology and Medicine."
Murphy's initial studies of breast cancer cells took place in a lab, using a test-tube dish of cancer cells treated with ginseng extract.
"We noticed within the first week the numbers were significantly reduced," she said. "It was great ... "The prostate cancer responded the same way. That was pretty exciting."
Other cultures are "light years ahead" of Western culture in their studies of the medicinal use of ginseng, Murphy said. For instance, Korean studies of Asian ginseng used in regard to lung, liver and certain skin cancers, she said, have revealed decreased cancer cell growth.
Murphy further discovered through research during the past six months that small doses of an "active constituent" of American Ginseng - ginsenoside Rc - can inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells.
Murphy first became interested in learning more about ginseng and its affects on hormone secretion when Illinois ginseng growers asked for her assistance in determining the reasons for the plant's high marketability in Asia, an area known for its own quality ginseng.
Murphy, a neuroscientist and endocrinologist, had finished studies on the effects of marijuana on libido and copulation performance in male rats at the time. She decided to begin similar work using ginseng.
"Their libido was significantly enhanced," she said. "I didn't know what to expect. It really threw me for a loop." Murphy's studies were published in the national "Journal of Physiology and Behavior" in 1998.
Spurred on by her findings and the fact that ginseng acted like a hormone, Murphy undertook studies on breast cancer and prostate cancer cells, which are hormone-dependent. Now she is conducting studies in mice, injecting them with human breast-cancer cells.
So far, Murphy has found that the tumors in the treated mice are "significantly lower" than those in the control animals. She plans to administer small doses of ginsenoside Rc in further studies.
Murphy sees the potential of human studies in the future. Not only does ginseng hold possibilities for prevention or treatment of breast and prostate cancer, Murphy said, but unlike chemotherapy, ginseng compounds are nontoxic, according to studies.
"Where the ginseng research is going to go," she said, "I don't know."
Whatever the results, Murphy said she is encouraged by her findings, and she hopes more researchers will become interested in studies of herbs and other dietary agents like tomatoes, broccoli and soy, which have already been ascribed anti-cancer links.
"I actually take one-a-day supplements with ginseng," Murphy said. "I only started taking it after my research. I figure it won't hurt."
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