The discovery made by East China Normal University and Texas A&M University has been published in the latest edition of Cancer Research, an international academic journal.

The research team led by Liu Mingyao, a professor with ECNU's institute of biomedical sciences, discovered that gambogic acid, a traditional Chinese medicine, could suppress vascular growth factors.

Without nutrients carried by micro-vessels, tumors stop growing and gradually die off.

Researchers used gambogic acid medicine to treat one of two groups of experimental mice with tumors.

Tumors in mice that had been given the medicine went into a dormant state.

Tumors in the mice that did not have the medicine grew.

Yi Zhengfang, an ECNU researcher and Liu's student, said the discovery was different from existing cancer treatments as it "starved" cancers by cutting off the growth transportation path.