A non-caloric natural sweetener – Stevioside– isolated from the leaves of Honey yerba has been found to have a bigger role in cancer treatment.
Researchers at the India’s Institute of Nano Science and Technology in their recent study have found that stevioside, a natural plant-based glycoside found in leaves of Honey yerba (‘Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni’) when coated on nanoparticles can increase the efficiency of Magnetic hyperthermia-mediated cancer therapy (MHCT).
MHCT method of cancer therapy is based on heating the tumor tissues using magnetic nanoparticles in comparison to the routinely used surfactant moieties (oleic acid and polysorbate-80).
Ruby Gupta and Deepika Sharma in their research published in the International Journal of Hyperthermia showed that coating the nanoparticles with the stevioside, a biosurfactant not only improved the cellular uptake of the nano-magnets in glioma C6 cancer cells (one of the most common and aggressive form of glial cancer cells) but also enhanced its retention time, an official release said. The researchers modified the stevioside structure to make it more effective as a biosurfactant for magnetic nanoclusters synthesized in the Lab.
They claimed that said that the stevioside coating exhibited significant improvement in the calorimetric hyperthermia activity, through particle size reduction of magnetic nanoparticles.
Stevioside coating increases the switching speed of magnetic spin of synthesized nanomaterial, increasing the thermal fluctuations and resulting in a higher amount of heat generated in comparison to other nanosystems.
Hyperthermia output of nano-magnets reduces dramatically on the agglomeration of nanoparticles.
Stevioside-coated nanoparticles also demonstrated successful uptake and highest cellular persistence inside the glioma cells upto 72 h, the release said. Thus the research suggests that the nano-magnets are capable of being available inside the cells for a sufficient period (upto at least 72 h) during which further treatment strategies can be employed for cancer therapy, this avoiding the need to re-administer the nanomaterials, it said.
