Lakshmi Taru and Cancer: What the Research Actually Shows

Does Lakshmi Taru (Simarouba glauca) cure cancer? There is no clinical evidence that it treats cancer in humans. Here is what the quassinoid research does and does not show.

The short answer

There is no clinical evidence that Lakshmi Taru treats or cures cancer in humans.

Laboratory studies have found that certain compounds in Simarouba glauca — a group called quassinoids — can kill or slow cancer cells in a dish, and some animal work exists. No published human clinical trial shows that taking Lakshmi Taru leaves treats cancer in a person.

Those are two very different statements, and almost everything sold on the back of this plant depends on blurring them.

If you or someone you love has cancer: talk to your oncologist before taking anything, including this leaf. Do not stop or delay treatment that is working.

What this page is, and what it is not. We are a plant nursery, not a medical source. Nothing here is medical advice, a diagnosis, or a recommendation to take or avoid anything. What follows is a summary of what published sources say, with those sources named, so you can take them to someone qualified. Where the literature is uncertain, we say so rather than resolving it for you. Your doctor or oncologist is the person to decide anything about your treatment. Last checked against the literature: 19 September 2026.

Why we wrote this page

We sell Lakshmi Taru planting material and we arrange the dried leaf. We would make more money writing what everyone else writes.

We are not going to, for a plain reason: people arrive at this plant frightened, often on behalf of someone very ill, and the Indian internet currently offers them nothing but sellers. This page is what we would want our own family to read.

What the research actually consists of

Quassinoids. Simarouba glauca is rich in a family of bitter compounds called quassinoids — among them glaucarubinone, ailanthinone, glaucarubin, glaucarubol, glaucarubolone and holacanthone. The bitterness you taste in every part of the tree is these compounds. They are genuinely biologically active — that is not in dispute, and it is why the plant has a long traditional use in Central America against dysentery, fever and malaria. The antiamoebic and antimalarial activity is the better-established side of this plant's pharmacology, not the anticancer claim.

What has been studied. There is a real and growing body of laboratory work, and it is worth describing accurately rather than dismissing:

In vitro. Quassinoids from S. glauca seed show cytotoxic activity against KB cells (human oral epidermoid carcinoma). Leaf-extract fractions — chloroform and ethyl acetate — have shown antiproliferative effects by triggering apoptosis in cell lines including breast adenocarcinoma, lung (A549) and leukaemic lines.
Animal models. Glaucarubinone has shown activity against solid tumours in human and mouse cell lines, against multidrug-resistant mammary tumours in mice, and antileukaemic activity in mice.
Combination work. Glaucarubinone has been reported in vitro to sensitise cells to paclitaxel, an established chemotherapy drug.
Antimalarial and antiamoebic research. Historically the most substantial line of investigation for this genus.

What does not exist, as far as we can establish from the published literature: a randomised controlled trial in humans showing that Lakshmi Taru leaf preparations treat any cancer. Recent review work on this species describes the findings as warranting further preclinical studies — that is, the research has not yet reached the stage of human trials, let alone completed them.

Why "kills cancer cells in a dish" means so little

This is the crux, and it deserves plain language.

Very many substances kill cancer cells in a dish. Bleach does. So does alcohol, and a long list of ordinary plant extracts. A cell in culture is directly bathed in a concentration of the compound that no cup of leaf tea can reproduce anywhere inside a human body.

For a laboratory finding to become a medicine, a compound must additionally:

survive digestion and reach the bloodstream at a meaningful concentration
reach the tumour in that concentration
kill cancer cells preferentially over healthy ones — cytotoxic means toxic to cells, not toxic to cancer specifically
do this at a dose a person can tolerate
be shown to help in actual patients, against a control group

The overwhelming majority of compounds that look promising in a dish fail at one of those steps. That is not cynicism; it is the ordinary attrition rate of drug discovery. Quassinoids have been studied for decades and have not cleared those hurdles for cancer treatment.

A few chemotherapy drugs are plant-derived — paclitaxel from yew, vincristine from periwinkle. They became medicines through exactly this process: isolation, dose-finding, clinical trials, regulatory approval. Nobody treats cancer by brewing yew bark at home, and the reason is instructive.

There is a particular irony here worth noticing. The most interesting cancer finding for this plant's best-studied quassinoid is that it made cells more responsive to paclitaxel — a hospital chemotherapy drug. Even where the laboratory work is most promising, it points toward conventional treatment, not away from it.

Where the Indian cancer claims came from

The tree reached India in 1966, when the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources brought accession EC 19701 from El Salvador/Brazil to the Amravati and Akola research stations in Maharashtra, for soil conservation and wasteland reclamation. The original case for it was agronomic: edible oil from dry, degraded land.

The Indian name is not a traditional one. "Lakshmi Taru" was given to the tree by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who also promoted its cultivation; the Sri Sri Institute of Agricultural Sciences and Technology Trust in Bengaluru developed agro-technology for growing it. That naming matters, because a tree called "Lakshmi Taru" — the tree of wealth — carries a promise before anyone says a word about medicine.

The claims did not start with sellers. Seeds reached the oilseeds section at the University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bengaluru, where Dr. Shyamsundar Joshi studied and planted them and became the tree's leading Indian advocate. Joshi and Shantha Joshi are described as insistent on the plant's cancer-curing and chemotherapy-alleviating properties. Whatever one makes of that, it matters for how the claim is read in India: it carries the authority of named scientists at a state agricultural university, not just the enthusiasm of nursery owners. It is also why the claim has proved so durable.

We disagree with the conclusion, and say so with the evidence set out above. We are not suggesting bad faith on anyone's part — only that laboratory activity and a treatment for people are different things, and the second has not been shown.

The anticancer interest is much older than the Indian marketing. Indian material widely cites a 1976 US National Cancer Institute screening in which an alcohol extract of simarouba showed activity against cancer cells at low concentrations — we have not been able to read that screening at source, so treat it as a claim rather than a citation. Laboratory work has continued since, and some of it is recent and serious: a 2018 paper in Frontiers in Pharmacology by Asha Jose and colleagues reported potent anticancer activity in chloroform and ethyl acetate leaf fractions, while noting that the mechanism still needs establishing in living organisms.

So the picture is not a simple one of sellers inventing a story. There is real laboratory science, a genuinely promising compound family, an auspicious name, and an enormous gap — still unbridged — between a cell line and a patient. The commercial claims fill that gap with confidence that the evidence does not support.

The agronomy is sound. What has been built on top of it is not, and it has done real harm to the tree's credibility as a crop.

Correction, 19 September 2026: an earlier draft of this page said the cancer claims spread "from roughly 2010" through plantation-scheme sellers. That was our assumption, and it was wrong on the date, the route and the people involved. Corrected above and sourced.

Safety: what the sources record

Because the marketing frames this plant as gentle and natural, it is worth setting out what published sources actually record. These are their findings, not our advice — we are a nursery. Take them to a doctor.

Cytotoxicity is the point, not a side note. The anticancer interest in these compounds exists because they kill cells. Quassinoids are documented as causing cell damage, and a compound that kills cells does not distinguish tidily between kinds of cells.
Vomiting and stomach irritation. Supplement-safety references record that simarouba taken in large amounts causes vomiting, and that quassinoids in quantity irritate the stomach's mucous membrane.
No established safe dose. We could find none published for leaf preparations. Reviews describe the evidence base as limited for demonstrating safe use and efficacy as a herbal medicine.
Pregnancy. This is the clearest warning in the literature. Simarouba is recorded as unsafe in pregnancy, and has been used deliberately to cause abortion; its cytotoxic and emetic properties are the stated reason.
Breastfeeding. The effect of quassinoids during lactation is recorded as not known, and the standing advice in those references is to avoid the plant.
Chemotherapy interactions. We found no studies. That is an absence of evidence, not evidence of safety — and it is a question for an oncologist, who should know about anything a patient is taking.
Liver and kidney conditions. Not specifically studied here either; a doctor is the person to ask.

Nothing on this site is medical advice, and we are not qualified to give any. If you are being treated for cancer, tell your oncologist about every supplement and herbal preparation you are considering, and take their direction over anything you read here or anywhere else online.

What we sell, and how we describe it

We list shade-dried Lakshmi Taru leaf. We describe it as a bitter herbal leaf. We do not claim it treats, prevents, cures or helps with cancer or any other disease, because we cannot support that claim and because making it would breach the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954. That is not a vague appeal to the law: "Cancer" is entry 6 in the Schedule to that Act, and "Tumours" is entry 51. Section 3 prohibits taking any part in publishing an advertisement suggesting a drug may be used for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of a scheduled condition — and the Act's definition of "advertisement" expressly includes a label, wrapper or any other document, so it reaches a product listing and a packet, not only a press ad.

If you want the leaf, you can buy it from us, and we will send it with these same safety notes attached — see what the leaf is and how to judge it. If a seller tells you it cures cancer, they are either misinformed or breaking the law, and either way it is a poor reason to trust them with your money or your health.

If you are here because someone you love is ill

We are sorry. Genuinely.

The honest position is this: there is no shortcut, and a plant that a stranger on the internet says cures cancer is not one. The things that help are established treatment, good palliative care, and time with people who love you.

Take this page to your oncologist if it is useful. Ask them directly. They will not dismiss you for asking.

Frequently asked questions

Does Lakshmi Taru cure cancer? No. There is no clinical evidence that Lakshmi Taru treats or cures cancer in humans. Laboratory studies show activity against cancer cells in culture, which does not establish a treatment.

Can I drink Lakshmi Taru leaf tea while on chemotherapy? Ask your oncologist first. Interactions with chemotherapy have not been studied, and a biologically active compound could interfere with treatment.

Are Lakshmi Taru leaves safe? Safety is not established in the published literature. The leaves contain cytotoxic quassinoids, and no safe dose has been set because the studies that would set one have not been done. Vomiting and stomach irritation are recorded at higher amounts, and the plant is recorded as unsafe in pregnancy. We are a nursery, not a medical source — ask a doctor.

Why do so many websites say it cures cancer? There is genuine laboratory evidence that quassinoids from this plant kill cancer cells in culture, and that work goes back decades. The claim that the leaf treats cancer in people goes far beyond it. The tree also carries an auspicious Indian name — "Lakshmi Taru", given by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar — and a high price for planting material, both of which reward confident claims. Advertising a cancer cure in India is prohibited: cancer is entry 6 in the Schedule to the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954.

Has Lakshmi Taru been tested on humans for cancer? Not in any randomised controlled trial we can find. The work published so far is laboratory and animal research, which reviews of this species describe as warranting further preclinical study — meaning it has not yet reached human trials.

What is Lakshmi Taru actually good for? As a crop: an oilseed tree for dry, degraded, well-drained land, whose kernels yield 55–65% oil. See the species guide and the farming economics.

Sources

Reviews of the pharmacology and phytochemistry of Simarouba glauca, covering its quassinoid profile (glaucarubinone, ailanthinone, glaucarubin, glaucarubol, glaucarubolone, holacanthone and others)
In vitro studies of leaf, root and seed extracts against breast adenocarcinoma, lung (A549), leukaemic and KB cell lines
Work on glaucarubinone in mouse tumour models, and on its in-vitro sensitisation of cells to paclitaxel
RxList — Simaruba and RxList — Quassia for reported adverse effects, pregnancy and lactation cautions
Plants For A Future — Simarouba glauca for traditional medicinal use
The Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 — full text and Schedule
Star of Mysore — "Paradise Tree: A tree for health & wealth" for the naming and Indian introduction history

Every statement on this page was checked against the published sources listed above on 19 September 2026. The page reports what those sources say and does not offer medical advice, a recommendation or a dosage. It has not been reviewed by a clinician. If you are qualified and think something here is wrong or misleading, please write to us at hi@agri.net.in — we will correct it.