MAKÜ’lü Scientists Seek Solution to Colon Cancer with Black Elderberry Fruit

Burdur Mehmet Akif Ersoy University (MAKÜ) faculty members have initiated a project to find a cure for colon cancer, one of the most common types of cancer in the world, using elderberry fruit.

Within the scope of the project, the team led by Prof. Dr. Ahmet Hulusi Dinçoğlu, Head of the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the Faculty of Health Sciences at MAKÜ, will start working by extracting the essences of elderberry fruit. Research on these extracts may bring a new ray of hope for colon cancer.

The project, initiated to obtain high-purity anthocyanins from elderberry fruit using the fractional supercritical carbon dioxide extraction method and to investigate their activities against colon cancer, is also supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).

Prof. Dr. Dinçoğlu: A Domestic and National Product

Making a statement about the project, project manager Prof. Dr. Ahmet Hulusi Dinçoğlu stated that the project will shed light on many projects in the field of health and said: “The main product of our project is elderberry fruit. Especially since it contains many components that are beneficial for health, it has become an attractive product in research. This elderberry fruit is a type of fruit that is also cultivated in different regions of Turkey. We have matured our project with our research team and presented it to TÜBİTAK to investigate how some of the components in this fruit, especially those with antioxidant effects, that is, those that have the property of cleaning harmful substances in the body, can have an effect on cancer. Our project was accepted by TÜBİTAK. In this project, we will first take the components of elderberry fruit, which we call anthocyanins, which are beneficial for health and have antioxidant properties, using a different extraction method called supercritical carbon dioxide extraction method, and try to determine their effects on colon cancer. Our preliminary research shows that we can obtain a positive result from this product.”

Students Affected by the Earthquake Are Also Part of the Project Team

Providing information about the project team, Prof. Dr.  Ahmet Hulusi Dinçoğlu; “The project includes researchers from many universities, especially MAKÜ. In the project, we will also obtain concrete outputs related to the training of graduate students and providing them with scholarships to follow their development on-site. At the same time, TÜBİTAK had a new project after the earthquake in our country. They expressed it as “We Will Work Together and Succeed Together” and abbreviated it as “BİÇABA”. We also had the opportunity to include undergraduate students from our university in this project. In this way, our undergraduate students can obtain a scientific output, they are in a learning process, and we can also provide them with scholarships as an economic contribution. Our project is also a study specifically for students affected by the earthquake.” he said.