Chinese researchers has found from the blood of home-reared geese in north China contains an agent that is capable of killing digestive and respiratory cancer cells.
The effect of the cancer-curing factor had been verified in laboratory research and some clinical experiments, said Chai Xin, a fellow with Heilongjiang Provincial Tumor Institute, who is in charge of a research group to find new biological agents to cure cancers.
Chai said they had studied five million geese raised in rural areas of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, which normally take five months to reach adult age, and found the susceptibility of geese to tumors was zero.
But the blood of geese reared in south China, which could reach adult age in just two and a half months, did not contain any cancer-curing agent, stressed Chai.
Chai said that using the agent extracted from goose blood, they had achieved the result of controlling 72.89 percent of liver cancer cells, and 69.2 percent of microscopic sarcoma (S180) in clinical experiments.
"The cancer-curing agent can work directly on cancer cells and effectively reduce the reproduction of such cells so that tumors shrink and eventually die," explained Chai. "In the entire process, the cancer-curing agent does not produce any toxic or side effects."
Chai said the agent had been applied to 150 patients suffering from digestive, respiratory and even reproductive cancers after ideal achievements had been obtained with more than two years' of experimenting on animals and the average success rate on human beings was around 70 percent.
Chai said they would continue clinical experiments for some time and the agent would be formally applied to clinical operations if a permit were obtained.
Two million Chinese people are diagnosed with cancer each year and 1.5 million people die of different types of cancer across the country.
(Xinhua News Agency April 15, 2003)
