Cancer patients are offering themselves as human guinea pigs as researchers investigate a possible cure for cancer found in north Queensland rainforests.

Scientists have identified a compound in the fruit of the native blushwood shrub that appears to "liquefy and destroy cancer with no side-effects", according to latest research.

Found deep in the remnants of a 130 million-year-old rainforest, the fruit extract may yet hold the secret antidote to Australia's No.1 killer disease. Victoria Gordon, of EcoBiotics, an Atherton Tableland-based company, said they hoped to go to human clinical trials later this year.

Dr Gordon said a single dose injection of the extract, known as EBC-46, had been effective in 50 critically ill dogs and about a dozen cats and horses.

"This is proving to be something exceptional," she said. "The tumour literally liquefies. "There is a rapid knock-down of the tumour, it disintegrates within 24 hours and we have a rapid healing response.

"The biggest tumour we treated was the size of a Coke can in a dog, and that animal is fully healed and healthy."