Evaluation of clinical studies of Ukrain in cancer patients

J.W. NOWICKY, A. LIEPINS, W. ZBROJA-SONTAG, A. STANISZEWSKI, J. DANILOS

INTRODUCTION
The   preparation   Ukrain,   containing  thiophos-phoric acid alkaloid derivatives from the plant Cheli-donium majus L. (greater celandine), was developed in 1975 as a result of observations that celandine juice had been widely used in folk medicine in the treatment of various skin lesions (eg. verruccs)'. In-vitro Ukrain causes an increase in oxygen con­sumption in both normal and malignant cell cul­tures2. In non-malignant cells oxygen consumption returns to normal within 15 minutes whereas in cancer cells it stops completely, resulting in cell damage.3 Ukrain has been found to enhance the cytolytic activity of murine primed spleen cells in a dose-dependent manner. 4 In other studies on cyto­toxicity  and immunomodulation,  performed with murine tumour cells as a target, Ukrain inhibited cell growth as well as DNA synthesis5.  tumour cells pretreated with Ukrain became more sensitive to natural killer (NK) cells5.
Ukrain was first used clinically in 1978. It has been shown to cause regression of tumours and me­tastases following pareznteral administration to cancer patients. 3This effect was a result of stimula­tion of the immune system and specifi pharmacolo­gical properties of the preparation (interference with specific respiratory enzymes of cancer cells) 3,6