It's not surprising, then, that the National Cancer Institute has just funded a new study examining the health benefits of muscadine grape skin. Researchers found that the skin of muscadine grapes can inhibit growth of prostate-cancer cells in the laboratory, which makes sense — except that muscadine grapes do not contain a significant amount of resveratrol.
The research team used a series of human prostate-cancer cells. The cells were chosen to represent different stages of prostate-cancer progression. The researchers discovered that muscadine grape skin can stop the growth of cancerous prostate cells without affecting normal cell growth.
It seems that muscadine grape skin starts a process called "apoptosis." Apoptosis is a process in which cells are programmed to die. Unlike cell death due to injury, for example, apoptosis is a beneficial process. For example, when a fetus is growing in the womb, apoptosis causes cell death in the fingers and toes so that they can separate into individual digits. There are many, many other examples of beneficial cell death.
In this particular study, apoptosis appeared to kill off cancer cells before they could divide and multiply. Researchers hope that because muscadine grape-skin extract worked through different stages of prostate-cancer tumor growth, it will also stop tumor growth at very early stages of the disease.
Muscadine grapes appear to differ from other grape varieties. Muscadine grapes are rich in something called "anthocyanins." Anthocyanins have strong antioxidant properties and have shown anti-tumor effects in previous clinical studies. The researchers now want to test muscadine grape skin outside the lab on cancerous and normal prostate cells in animals. Muscadine grape products, including grape juice and grape wine, have been used without reported side effects, making them safe for use in human clinical trials.6
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