An ingredient in olive oil that appears to kill cancer cells

I'm happy to see the authors have posted in the first paragraph something to preempt my posting of the "X kills cancer" XKCD : http://xkcd.com/1217/

> A Rutgers nutritional scientist and two cancer biologists at New York City’s Hunter College have found that an ingredient in extra-virgin olive oil kills a variety of human cancer cells without harming healthy cells.

The alt text of that XKCD is:

Now, if it selectively kills cancer cells in a petri dish, you can be sure it's at least a great breakthrough for everyone suffering from petri dish cancer.

so it's still relevant.

A headline that might prolong my life!

Thank you internet..

Just like cannabis cures cancer

In vitro. There are many substances that do that. When they can do it in vivo, on a lab rat, it will be news.

Wikipedia: Oleocanthal is capable of killing a variety of human cancer cells in vivo while leaving healthy cells unharmed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleocanthal#Cell_death

Here's the scientific article quoted by the pop-science article used as a Wikipedia reference: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23723556.2015.100...

The abstract says nothing about in vivo tests.