According to researchers from the Gujarat Institute of Desert Ecology (GUIDE) and Kutch University, the rarest naturally occurring element on earth, astatine, has been successfully extracted from edible mushrooms. They revealed that mushrooms grown in India′s largest district, Kutch, were used to extract chemical components for new cancer-treatment radiation therapy.

Astatine, which is both rare and has a very brief lifespan, causes minimal side effects associated with chemotherapy. Astatine is a radioactive element that decays within hours; therefore, there are only a few grammes of it available on Earth. Dr V. Vijay Kumar, the director of GUIDE, explained that cobalt radiations are used in chemotherapy to treat cancer. However, cobalt stays inside the body for a long period of time and affects both healthy and cancerous cells, causing side effects.

In contrast, only cancer cells are harmed by astatine. According to Mr K Karthikeyan, the project′s principal scientist at GUIDE, researchers around the world have acknowledged that astatine can increase the efficiency of radioimmunotherapy (RIT) for treating tumours and other cancers because it inhibits the metastasis of tumour cells that are typically resistant to chemo and radioactive therapy. 

(Source: https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/rarest-element-used-in-cancer-cureextracted-from-kutch-mushrooms/97983612 )