The Influence of Isorel on the Advanced Colorectal Cancer

Abstract

There is still no therapy method in the colorectal cancers that is good enough for such a complex disease. Combined surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy improved survival, but the side effects and the poor performance status of the patients seriously affect the use of these methods. We used a therapeutical approach of surgery and chemotherapy combined with biotherapy by Viscum album extract Isorel, aiming to improve the patients' resistance to the disease and to render the treatment's side effects more tolerable. Isorel is aqueous extract well known for its anticancer effects obtained by various in vitro and in vivo experimental models and which was validated by an in vitro bioassay on murine melanoma B16F10 and human cervical carcinoma HeLa cells. Isorel strongly reduced human colon cancer HT 29 cell line growth in vitro in the MTT bioassay. Hence, it was further used in a prospective, randomized, and controlled study which compared the postoperative results for patients with colorectal cancer stages Dukes C (40 patients) and D (24 patients) who, beside surgery, received either only chemotherapy (5-FU), 6 cycles (either the Mayo or the De Gramont protocol) or chemotherapy combined with Isorel biotherapy. These 64 patients were randomly allocated into three groups "only chemotherapy" for 21 cases, chemo + biotherapy for 29 cases and 14 patients underwent only surgery as the control group. We noted no toxic deaths due to either chemo or biotherapy. The patients operated on and treated with chemo and biotherapy had median survival significantly better and a cumulative proportion survival (Kaplan-Maier) superior to those of the patients receiving only postoperative chemotherapy. Thus, colorectal cancer patients seem to benefit in terms of survival from combined postoperative chemotherapy and Isorel biotherapy, either adjuvant or palliative.

Lectins as Bioactive Plant Proteins: A Potential in Cancer Treatment

“…Colorectal cancer patients seem to benefit in terms of survival from combined postoperative chemotherapy and Isorel biotherapy, either adjuvant or palliative. Viscum album extract Isorel (Novipharm) is produced by the cold extraction of the entire plant in saline, without homogenization of the plant or extract fermentation (Cazacu et al, 2003). However, Ernst et al (2003) recently evaluated the evidence both for and against mistletoe extracts as a treatment of cancer from all randomized clinical trials available to date.…”

Safety of Intravenous Application of Mistletoe (Viscum album L.) Preparations in Oncology: An Observational Study

“…We also found a prospective, randomised, controlled trial in which colorectal cancer patients seemed to benefit in terms of survival from combined postoperative chemotherapy and i.v. mistletoe therapy (Isorel) compared to chemotherapy alone [22]. However, the methodological quality of this and other studies assessing the safety and effectiveness of mistletoe therapy has been criticised [1].…”

Randomized and Double-Blind Studies – Demands and Reality as Demonstrated by Two Examples of Mistletoe Research

“…Thus -even if participation in a multicenter mistletoe study has been agreed -the patients suitable for this will be included, by preference, in competing conventional therapy studies. One way out of this unsatisfactory situation is to transfer randomized controlled trials abroad, for example as in the study cited above on the use of Lektinol  additive to adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer patients in eastern Europe [3], the study with the mistletoe preparation Isorel  for advanced colorectal cancer in Romania [13], or the study with Helixor  as complementary treatment to chemotherapy for breast, ovarian and non-small-cell lung cancer in China [14]. Such studies are helpful -but efforts to achieve adequate clinical research should not be confined to them alone.…”