Hot pepper treat pancreatic cancer

University of Pittsburgh pharmacologist Sanjay Srivastava and his colleagues recently reported that they found that capsaicin--the chemical that makes hot peppers hot--induced apoptosis in mice with human pancreatic cancer, an aggressive and usually fatal disease. Treated mice had tumors half the size of their untreated peers. Capsaicin triggered the cancerous cells to die off and significantly reduced the size of the tumors. Experts point out that many compounds shown to stop cancer in mice are not nearly as effective in human cancer patients. Pancreatic cancer is highly deadly, killing 31,000 of the 32,000 it will be diagnosed in this year.