Abstract C138: The benefit of Ma recipe, A combination of Chinese herbal medicines for patients with advanced esophageal cancer: A retrospective case report series
Authors: Feng Jiangnan , Ma Zhenghua , Wu Hua , Gao Meiying , Yi Chengsheng , LIU Xia , Feng Jiangnan 
Published: December 2023

Background- Ma recipe is an ancient Chinese medicine recipe used for venomous snake bites. Four Chinese herbal medicines, prunella, vitex seed, red grass and eucalyptus leaves, were deemed essential ingredients in the Ma recipe prescription. Since Ma recipe has a powerful analgesic effect, it has been used to treat serious cancer pain in our clinic for over decade. It has observed that patients with advanced lung cancer、advanced liver cancer and some of other solid tumor also survive significantly longer after the elimination of cancer pain. In this small number of retrospective case series, we report the efficacy of Ma recipe therapeutics and pathological changes of tumor lesion before and after treatment in patients with advanced esophageal cancer.

Methods-Treatment was in the form of prescriptions written by traditional Chinese doctors. This behavior is consistent with the norms of traditional Chinese medicine, and does not deviate from the conventional clinical practice. Ma recipe should be taken orally every day at 10 grams. Benefits from Ma recipe therapeutics was assessed by comparing symptom improvement and pathological changes before and after treatment, as well as by survival analysis.

Results- A total of 12 patients with advanced esophageal cancer were treated by Ma recipe therapeutics. Seven of 12 had severe obstructive symptoms of eating difficulty and weakness that it must be treated symptomatically. These symptoms were reduced or disappeared within 7 to 30 days of Ma recipe treatment and were sustained clinical recovery maintained thereafter. There were no events of death and disease progression occur in all the patients with Ma recipe intervention at the data cutoff point of the median duration of exposure to Ma recipe therapeutics was 48 months (range, 12-85 months). All the treated patients returned to normal life. Of the 12 cases, 9 had pathological examinations before and after administration of Ma recipe. Results all 9 patients were diagnosed esophageal cancer in the pathological biopsy tissue specimens obtained prior to administration of Ma recipe, but no cancer cells were found in all Pathological biopsy tissue specimens were obtained after Ma recipe treatment. Of the 9 cases undergoing pathological examination, 6 received radiotherapy after administration of Ma recipe. Ma recipetherapeutics has not been found to have serious side effects in years of clinical practice.

Conclusions- The survival benefit of Ma recipe therapeutics for patients with advanced esophageal cancer is enormous. The ability of Ma recipe treatment to rapidly improve obstructive symptoms in advanced esophageal cancer is a highlight. The pathological changes before and after treatment support that Ma recipe therapeutics has a definite curative effect on esophageal cancer. However, this study is a post hoc secondary analysis and the limitation of the insufficient number must be treated with caution. This study can only give an indication that Ma recipe therapeutics has the potential to become an approach for patients with advanced esophageal cancer.

Citation Format: Jiangnan Feng, Zhenghua Ma, Hua Wu, Meiying Gao, Chengsheng Yi, Xia LIU, Jiangnan Feng. The benefit of Ma recipe, A combination of Chinese herbal medicines for patients with advanced esophageal cancer: A retrospective case report series [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC Virtual International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2023 Oct 11-15; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2023;22(12 Suppl):Abstract nr C138.