A shrub found in Southeast Asia can give you a rash like poison ivy; but it may also stop prostate cancer. The croton plant, long known to oriental herbalists and homeopaths as a purgative, has an oil in its seeds that shows promise for the treatment of prostate cancer – the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the United States. The active ingredient in the oil is 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate, a compound generally known as TPA. The finding was reported in the March 1, 2004, issue of Cancer Research by Xi Zheng, Allan Conney and other scientists at the Susan Lehman Cullman Laboratory for Cancer Research at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey (CINJ).
