CORNELL ANTI-CANCER FINDINGS – HOW THEY DID IT & WHAT THEY FOUND

The Cornell University researchers, Rui Hai Liu and Chang Yong Lee used red delicious apples grown in New York state to provide the extracts to study the effects of phytochemicals.

The researchers compared the anti-cancer and anti-oxidant activity in the apple flesh, and they also studied the fruit’s skin.

Using colon cancer cells treated with the New York apple extract, the scientists found that cell proliferation was inhibited. Colon cancer cells treated with 50 milligrams of apple extract from the skins were inhibited by 43 percent.

The apple flesh extract inhibited the colon cancer cells by 29 percent.

The researchers also tested the apple extract against human liver cancer cells.

At 50 milligrams, the extract derived from the apple with the skin on inhibited those cancer cells by 57 percent, and the apple extract derived from the fruit’s fleshy part inhibited cancer cells by 40 percent.

"The consumption of whole fruits may provide the balanced anti-oxidants needed to quench reactive oxygen species," write the researchers in the Nature article. "Phytochemicals other than ascorbic acid (vitamin C) … contribute significantly to the anti-oxidant activity of apples and to the capacity to inhibit tumor cell proliferation."

Lee began studying the enzymatic browning action of apples about 15 years ago, identifying a variety of phenolic compounds and learning how these chemicals work during the apple’s browning action.

The researchers learned that the amount of phenolic compounds in the apple flesh and in the skin varied from year to year, season to season and from growing region to growing region.