Turkish scientist works on cure of ALS with celery

ISTANBUL

Studying vegetables and fruits for the removal of disease-causing cell plaques, a Turkish scientist has managed to remove plaques that lead to ALS disease with celery extract.

Neslihan Taşlı, a researcher from Yeditepe University’s Genetics and Bioengineering Department, has been conducting studies on the use of celery extract in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer for a while.

Providing information regarding the removing of cell plaques that cause diseases, Taşlı said, “What we are doing is a system that allows the cell to throw out its own garbage, and we have achieved this with celery.”

Though she initially worked on tissue systems and tissue engineering, for the last four years she has focused mostly on the “exosome,” which she described as the “social media of cells,” small vesicles that provide messaging between cells.

“The message given by a cell to another one is vital for diagnosing the problem or disease in the region,” Taşlı explained.

Based on the idea that plants have the capacity to perceive these messages, Taşlı and her team examined some vegetables and fruits in the laboratory.

“While we were working on these, we started a study based on the idea that plants also synthesize these messages,” she stated.

“We went to the grocery stores and supermarkets and bought some vegetables and fruits. My team obtained some exosomes from them. We have researched these in the literature,” Taşlı explained.

“One of my students was working on neurodegenerative diseases at that time. So, we started from this point. We started on ALS first,” Taşlı noted.

“In ALS disease, we carried out studies with vegetables and fruits to destroy plaques accumulated inside the cell by using exosomes. Of the many fruits and vegetables, we reviewed, we found celery to be the most effective one,” she explained.

“We started a project on that and applied to the Turkish Academy of Sciences [TÜBA],” she added.

She also stated that businessperson İnan Kıraç provided a scholarship to the team so that they could continue their research.

Explaining that during these studies, the question arises of whether these diseases can be cured in case of consuming celery, Taşlı said, “It is important to filter the celery extract and give it in the right dose in a way that is stripped of other substances.

“Celery is a healthy vegetable, but no matter how much it is eaten, it cannot show the effect we get in the laboratory by just consuming it,” she explained.