[Jed]: But one of the trials that you won't see a publication on, that I'm very sad did
not get to completion and did not really accrue enough patients and I hope we can find collaborators
to do a trial on this, is bladder cancer prevention.
And, again, I go back to my old friend Yuesheng Zhang at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in
Buffalo.
He made the observation many, many years ago that, gee, when you think about how sulforaphane
courses through the body, it winds up being excreted in the urine as either sulforaphane
free and clear, or the majority of it comes out as its conjugates with glutathione, one
of the main antioxidant peptides in the body.
Glutathione or acetylcysteine sulforaphane, a variety of sort of antioxidant, glutathione-derived
conjugates.
And all of them have some activity in up-regulating Nrf2, also.
So what happens?
Go in here, you eat sulforaphane or you ingest it or you can even put it on your skin.
We've done a number trials showing protection against ultraviolet radiation.
It gets metabolized, it gets excreted.
How does it get excreted?
In the urine.
What happens to urine?
It hangs around in the bladder.
So what you wind up having is a high concentration, relatively high concentration of both sulforaphane
and its active metabolites in the bladder bathing that bladder epithelium and it's only,
obviously, periodically released.
We think it would be the perfect place to demonstrate protection against cancer or cancer
prevention.
And so we actually had permission for and started and only accrued, I think, only enrolled,
I think, one or two subjects a trial in which we were to look at just that.
And these were people, where we were looking at secondary reappearance of bladder cancer.
So they had had a tumor removed that had cystectomy and we were looking at the health of the bladder
and levels of Nrf2 in bladder tissue that was acquired by biopsy.
So that was the design of this study.
As I say, it didn't happen.
We're actually trying to get one off the ground with dogs now.
Dogs are a little different because they sort of pee when they want to.
So there's probably not the same constant reservoir of sulforaphane and its metabolites
in the bladder, but certainly to a degree, there will be.
It's also harder to collect the 24-hour urine on a dog and to do some of the interventions.
But so we are trying to get a canine bladder cancer prevention trial off the ground.
And as I say, we'd love to see it done in humans because it's...if there was a gimmie,
that's a gimmie.
I mean, it's got to work there if it's going to work anywhere.
[Rhonda]: The epidemiology is so strong showing, I mean, I can just, study after study after
study showing cruciferous intake raw broccoli it's showing...and preventing bladder recurrence,
as well.
People that are eating these foods, it's not a clinical trial, but it's just associative
data.
And there's been animal studies with bladder cancer where they give them some carcinogen
and sulforaphane in it.
So I agree with you.
I mean, it would be really nice to see an actual clinical trial done in humans and it
does make perfect sense.
Prostate cancer is another one that seems to also sort of go hand in hand.
I mean, the prostate and prostate inflammation seems to be lowered and one study is showing
that men with prostate cancer that were given pretty relatively high doses of sulforaphane,
it slowed their doubling rate of the PSA by 86%.
So, I mean, that's pretty significant.
[Jed]: Yeah, yeah.
So there are two prostate cancer studies...well, there are probably more.
But Joshi Alumkal at OHSU did one and Bernard Cippola in France using, actually, the supplement.
So Cippola's study used, where he showed a dramatic reduction in the trajectory of PSA
numbers was in, used...
What's it called?
[Rhonda]: Prostaphane?
[Jed]: Prostaphane, thank you.
Yeah, the French supplement.
And Alumkal's study used our homemade broccoli sprout extract.
You mentioned the animal studies.
We actually were partnered on three or four animal studies with Yuesheng Zhang and Rex
Munday in New Zealand.
And it was extremely impressive to see the difference in bladder cancer.
[Rhonda]: Right, tumor size.
[Jed]: Tumor number, tumor size and number.
[Rhonda]: I mean, it was.
I saw the publication, extremely robust.
[Jed]: Yeah.
Nice, gross color pictures, too.
[Rhonda]: Yeah, I'm convinced, yeah.
You know, and the other thing is smokers.
Smokers get bladder cancer and that, you know...I think, first of all, people that smoke should
quit smoking first and foremost, but if they don't quit smoking, I mean, I think they should
be consuming broccoli sprouts like nobody's business because they're accumulating so much
benzene and all sorts of carcinogens.