Pine Tree Bark May be the New Cure for Melanoma

A substance that comes from pine bark is a potential source for a new treatment of melanoma, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

Current melanoma drugs that target single proteins can initially be effective, but the cancer cells quickly develop resistance to the treatment and the body is unable to fight off the disease.

"To a cancer cell, resistance is like a traffic problem in its circuitry," Gavin Robertson, professor of pharmacology, pathology, dermatology, and surgery and director of the Penn State Hershey Melanoma Center, explained in a statement. "Cancer cells see treatment with a single drug as a road closure and use a detour or other roads to bypass the closure."

Penn State researchers may have circumvented this problem by essentially creating a "traffic jam" that cancer cells cannot bypass.

The team screened 480 natural compounds and identified leelamine, derived from the bark of pine trees, as a drug that can possibly prevent cancer cells from developing resistance to treatments.

"Natural products can be a source of effective cancer drugs, and several are being used for treating a variety of cancers," Robertson said. "Over 60 percent of anti-cancer agents are derived from plants, animals, marine sources or microorganisms. However, leelamine is unique in the way that it acts."

Leelamine has the potential to target and shut down several protein pathways, such as PI3K, MAPK and STAT3, at the same time - pathways involved in the development of up to 70 percent of melanomas.

The pine tree-acquired substance works by shutting down cholesterol transport and its movement around the cancer cell, effectively preventing cancer cells from communicating with each other, leading to their death.

Researchers reported their results in two back-to-back articles in a recent issue of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.