Cancer patients are offering themselves as human guinea pigs as researchers investigate a possible cure for cancer found in north Queensland rainforests. Scientists have identified a compound in the fruit of the native blushwood shrub that appears to ‘liquefy and destroy cancer with no side-effects’, according to latest research. Found deep in the remnants of a 130 million-year-old rainforest, the fruit extract may yet hold the secret antidote to Australia’s No.1 killer disease. Victoria Gordon, of EcoBiotics, an Atherton Tableland-based company, said they hoped to go to human clinical trials later this year. Dr Gordon said a single dose injection of the extract, known as EBC-46, had been effective in 50 critically ill dogs and about a dozen cats and horses. ‘This is proving to be something exceptional,’ she said. ‘The tumour literally liquefies. ‘There is a rapid knock-down of the tumour, it disintegrates within 24 hours and we have a rapid healing response. ‘The biggest tumour we treated was the size of a Coke can in a dog, and that animal is fully healed and healthy.’ Dr Gordon said it had worked on skin cancers, such as carcinomas and melanomas, […]