Thursday Dec 8, 2016 (foodconsumer.org) -- Triple negative breast cancer is the most dangerous type of breast cancer because few effective treatments are available to treat the disease. This type of breast cancer tends to have lots of stem like cells which are resistant to chemotherapies.
A new study in Cancer Research: Cancer Chemistry suggests that sulforaphane - a compound found in broccoli and its sprouts may be enlisted as a supplement to fight triple negative breast cancer. The supplement would be most potent when it is used before the stem-like cells are formed or before chemotherapy is administered.
For the study, sulforaphane was tested in a breast cancer cell lines with enriched stem cells to see how this supplement affects the cancer stem cells from the triple negative breast cancer tumors.
The study results show breast cancer stem cells treated with sulforaphane in a dose of 7.5 uM lost its capability of forming mammosphere in vitro. Mammosphere is a charactristic of stemness. Loss of stemness means that the cells can be killed with chemotherapy drugs.
The cancer-inhibitory effect was also evident in mice. For the study, nude mice were inoculated with breast cancer cells with enriched stem cells before or after supplementation with sulforaphane. In both cases, mice supplemented with sulforaphane developed smaller tumors compared to controls. And the preventive effect was even greater in mice that received the cancer cells after sulforaphane supplementation.
In the in vivo experiment, the sulforaphane supplement in a dose of 50 mg per kg body weight was delivered daily through i.p. injection for five weeks in mice that were inoculated with breast cancer cells after supplementation and for three weeks in mice that received breast cancer cells before supplementation. This studydemonstrated that sulforaphane can be used as a safe and effective chemo preventative against triple negative breast cancer.
The study also reveals that supplementation with sulforaphane down-regulated all tested 192 stem cell biomarkers in mice pre-treated with this supplement. This confirms that supplementation with sulforaphane prevents the formation of stem-like cells in breast cancer cells.
The important thing to understand is, when do the stem-like cells in the breast cancer cells develop? It is known that the drug resistance related to the stemness of breast cancer cells develops when breast cancer cells are repeatedly treated with chemotherapy. This means, breast cancer patients may be better off taking sulforaphane supplements before any chemotherapy treatment if they ever want to use any chemotherapy. In other words, the supplement is better used before the stem-like cells are developed.
This study seems to suggest that sulforaphane may be used also as a standalone treatment against triple negative breast cancer. Interested readers may consult the original publication for details. (David Liu)
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