STAT3 Inhibitors and Thunder God Vine

You may or may not be familiar with the term STAT3 inhibitor…

If you are fighting cancer or watching a loved one fight it, this term may be something you have just recently come across.  Its important to understand fully the role of STAT3 inhibition in cancers and how that could possibly improve health and inhibit or reverse cancer growth.

STAT3 is a gene that lives inside the incredibly complex human genome.  STAT3 itself is a member of the STAT family of genes; there are numerous other genes in this family.  The role of the STAT genes is to provide instructions or a blueprint for your body to actually create proteins that take part in the chemical “language” of cells within the body.  The STAT genes are transcriptor genes; they “transcribe” the instructions for the body to follow.

When a STAT protein is activated by a particular set of chemical signals, it moves into the center of the cell (the nucleus) and binds to specific portions of the human DNA strand.  In doing so, STAT proteins regulate whether certain genes are active or inactive.  In other words, STAT3 determines if they are turned on, or turned off.  This is why it is called a STAT3 Inhibitor.

Numerous cellular functions are regulated by the STAT3 protein, namely – cell growth, division, and death.

Since cellular growth is essential for life, this protein is a necessary in the life of a human being. Therefore a STAT3 Inhibitor will inhibit the function of the gene to stop out of control growth in the human body.

STAT3 genes and proteins are also active in our immune system, specifically for the maturation of both T and B cells, which both help to regulate the body’s response to foreign invaders like viruses and bacteria.  It also plays a key role in inflammation, which is also an immune response.

Why is the STAT3 gene important in the role of cancers and tumors and is a stat3 inhibitor bad?

Image courtesy of https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3670264/

STAT3 is present in nearly 70% of tumors, and in “approximately one-third of cases of a blood cancer called large granular lymphocytic leukemia (LGL). LGL is characterized by the accumulation of white blood cells (lymphocytes) that are abnormally large and contain structures called granules.” (https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/STAT3)

The recent findings that tumors harbor activating mutations of STAT3 underlines the need for additional STAT3 inhibitors.

In addition, studies on cancer cell lines indicate that even when STAT3 direct targeting is insufficient to induce cell death; it can diminish the resistance to other anti-cancer compounds such as doxorubicin or EGFR inhibitors.

Finally, STAT3 direct inhibitors are also probably less toxic than many others because inhibition of STAT3 in mature cells has minimal effects (Fagard, et al, 2013).

Now, how does thunder god vine play a role in this?

Thunder god vine is a natural STAT3 inhibitor.  According to Dr. Ken Crawford, author of Nu-Oncology, thunder god vine possesses “several anti-cancer qualities like inhibition of proliferation and metastasis, and increases pro-apoptotic proteins and induces apoptosis (cell death) in cancer cells.  Thunder god vine contains another anti-cancer molecule known as Triptolide.  Triptolide blocks the growth of all 60 of the National Cancer Institutes cancer cell lines at very low doses.” (page 232).

So quite simply, Thunder God Vine is a natural stat3 inhibitor.

References:

Crawford, Ken. “Nu-Oncology”. 2017. Nu-Oncology Press Inc.

Fagard, Remi et al. “STAT3 Inhibitors for Cancer Therapy: Have All Roads Been Explored?” JAK-STAT 2.1 (2013): e22882. PMC. Web. 12 June 2018.

**Mandatory FDA Statement: None of the opinions on this website are meant to be substitued for a doctor’s care and advice.  We are not doctors.  These statements have not been approved by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, cure or treat any illness.