We know that, Daffodil is a common English name, sometimes used now for all varieties of Narcissus genus, and is the chief common name of horticultural prevalence used by the American Daffodil Society.
Its use in medicinal use has been reported, in kampo (traditional Japanese medicine - wounds were treated with narcissus root and wheat flour paste), listed in De Medicina (among medical herbs, described as emollient, erodent, and "powerful to disperse whatever has collected in any part of the body). However in one scientific study, the ethanol extract of the bulbs was found effective in one mouse model of nociception, para-benzoquinone induced abdominal constriction, but not in another, the hot plate test.
Now researchers lead by Robert Kiss from Institute of Pharmacy at the Universit- Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium, have come up with an interesting findings i.e., a natural compound found in daffodil bulbs, called narciclasine (see structure below) , may be a powerful therapeutic against biologically aggressive forms of human brain cancers.
To make this discovery, Kiss and colleagues used computer-assisted techniques to identify targets for narciclasine in cancer cells. The strongest potential candidate to emerge was the eEF1A elongation factor. Researchers then grafted human melanoma brain metastatic cells into the brains of genetically altered mice. Results showed that the injected mice survived significantly longer when treated with narciclasine than those mice left untreated. The researchers believe that narciclasine selectively inhibits the proliferation of very aggressive cancer cells, while avoiding adverse effects on normal cells. Narciclasine could be used in the near future to combat brain cancers, including gliomas, and metastases such as melanoma brain metastases.....
