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Tulsi Plant May Be a Potent Medicine Against Cancer

Hindus have been using Tulsi, or Basil, as medicine from the Vedic Age. It is also widely worshipped in India. Tulsi plant is mainly associated with Hindu God Vishnu. Now a group of researchers in the United States indicates that Tulsi plant may be a potent medicine against cancer. Tulsi or basil has eugenol that helps fight cancer.
Business Standard reports
"When you grind basil leaves, a compound called eugenol comes out. If I could make it produce eugenol in higher amounts, that basil plant would serve as a storehouse of that anti-cancerous compound," said Chandrakanth Emani, assistant professor of plant molecular biology at Western Kentucky University-Owensboro (WKU-O) in the US. 
In his lab at the Owensboro facility, Emani and his students are genetically engineering the basil to produce more eugenol, a compound in basil that, in his words, "has a very great pharmaceutical value because it's shown to control breast cancer". 
"Eugenol, when they put it on a plate where there are tumour cells, it stopped growth of the tumour cells. That was a proof of concept experiment which was done a long time back," said Emani, in a press release issued by the university.