Green Tea and Cancer

 Methotrexate is known to slow cancer growth in some patients  Many useful drugs come from plant sources  Epidemiological studies seem to indicate that people who drink lots of green tea are less prone to cancer  Green tea contains EGCG ◦ Epigallocatechin-3-Gallate  EGCG is similar in chemical structure to methotrexate  Chemical structure often determines chemical function

MethotrexateEGCG

 EGCG could be an effective cancer treatment  If cancer patients are given EGCG, then their tumors will grow less rapidly.

 Find 100 cancer patients  What is the independent variable? ◦ Administering EGCG  What is the dependent variable? ◦ Slowing tumor growth  What will happen with the experimental group? ◦ Receive EGCG  What will happen with the control group? ◦ Receive Placebo  What are possible extraneous variables? ◦ Diet, health, age  How can we prevent extraneous variables? ◦ Design more controlled experiment (type people)  How will we know if an extraneous variable happened? ◦ Results of experiment very different from the hypothesis

 ????  Will require many, many trials before we are confident.