Broccoli in a bottle

'Abroccoli pill a day keeps cancer away." This phrase may soon replace the old adage about apples and doctors as scientists at Phytomedics Inc. work on a vitamin pill that will offer triple the amount of the PEITC anti-cancer agents found in raw broccoli. Phytomedics has a licensing agreement with the Solgar division of American Home Products to market its vitamins containing super-concentrated PEITC. Actually derived from a hydroponic greenhouse-grown relative of watercress, the PEITC is concentrated into a pill form offering the same advantage as eating three heads of raw broccoli a day.

"While you can get adequate amounts of PEITC from eating raw broccoli, if you try to turn broccoli into a pill you lose the effect because broccoli's PEITC has a very short shelf life. It can't be turned into a pill," says Ira Pastor, executive vice president, Phytomedics, Dayton, N.J.

By using carefully controlled hydroponic greenhouses, Phytomedics produces plants with high concentrations of PEITC and other anti-oxidants and cancer-fighters. Also in the pipeline are other "farmaceuticals" that address Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular diseases, cholesterol, diabetes, erectile dysfunction, sleep improvement, skin and eye diseases and anti-viral (HSV, influenza, colds and HIV) concerns.

While scores of pharmaceutical companies look to plants to develop new cures, Phytomedics has a major advantage. It uses "phyto-elicitation" technology to encourage plants to produce increased amounts of medicinal compounds at its carefully monitored greenhouses at Rutgers University and in Columbus, N.J.

"Plants are not static systems. They don't make the same thing all of the time, and that is one of the problems with the current nutraceutical industry," Pastor says. "Consumers are not sure what they are getting each time they buy a bottle of pills because plants make one type of compound when they are growing in the sunlight, and entirely different ones in rainy weather. Our technology brings all of that into focus and allows us to control the plant chemistry. We can use plants for the production of new compounds for the drug industry, or make existing compounds more potent, so the patient doesn't have to consume three heads of broccoli to get an adequate amount of some anti-cancer compound," he says.

Phytomedics is also developing a natural, rather than synthetically produced, form of aspirin derived from wintergreen. "We think this has a lot of potential because of all the cardiovascular benefits of aspirin. We now have a way to produce large amounts economically from a natural source," Pastor says.