Beer has been known for its health benefits, but it's the beer hops, the flowers that add bitterness to beer, that are packed with anticancer properties.
Researchers have been working on harnessing the anticancer and anti-inflammatory properties of beer hops, and soon they may be able to produce the healthful hops compounds straight from the laboratory instead of extracting these from plants. In time, they will be able to develop new medicines made from these compounds.
"When researchers extract healthful chemicals from hops, they first have to determine whether they have separated out the specific compounds they're interested in," says Kristopher Waynant, lead researcher from the University of Idaho.
To ensure that scientists are getting the right compounds from hops, Waynant suggests making these yourself from scratch. He investigated how hops compounds, particularly humulones and lupulones, could be developed in the laboratory in the most efficient way.
Humulones are alpha acids that contain both anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties while lupulones are beta acids that are also important and render healthy effects. These acids have been shown to be potent cancer cell killers and they also prevent leukemia cells from clinging to bone in experiments. In theory, these acids can be made into cancer-fighting medicine. In practice, it can be tricky.
Scientists first need to make sure they will be extracting the right acids from hops. This can be done through separating these acids with the use of liquid chromatography, but for this method to be accurate, the results have to be compared to analytical standards. This is where the problem lies - there are no standards yet for the individual compounds.
To address the problem, Waynant is attempting to synthesize the two acids in the lab. University of Idaho undergraduate student Lucas Sass is assisting Waynant in the research.
At present, Waynant and Sass are still experimenting, but they are close to optimizing the complete method for producing humulones successfully in the laboratory. To be able to develop their research further, they plan on collaborating with and reaching out to other medical researchers.
"It's been a lot of trial and error," says Sass. "But it's so exciting when an approach finally works."
The team presented their work at the 251st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in San Diego.
