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Health News Archive 159 - Breast Cancer
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Curcumin Impedes Breast Cancer Metastasis

A study published in the Oct 2005 journal Clinical Cancer Research found that curcumin, a substance in the spice turmeric, prevents breast cancer from spreading to the lungs of mice given the compound.

Researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center injected 60 mice with human metastatic breast cancer cells. When the tumors reached the size of 10 millimeters, they were surgically removed. Five days later, half the mice were fed diets enhanced with curcumin, while the remainder received standard diets until the study’s conclusion. Fifteen of the mice in each group were injected with paclitaxel (Taxol®) at days 10, 17, and 24 following tumor removal. Although paclitaxel is effective in treating breast cancer, it also encourages metastasis when used for an extended period and therefore is not effective in treating the advanced form of the disease.

Upon examination of the animals’ lungs five weeks after removal of the tumors, 96% of the mice in the control group who received neither curcumin nor paclitaxel had visible metastases. While paclitaxel alone elicited a modest reduction in visible metastases, curcumin produced a significant reduction, and the combination of curcumin and paclitaxel prevented the macrometastases entirely. Microscopic metastases were found in only 28% of the mice receiving the curcumin/drug combination, and these consisted of only a few cells, suggesting that the treatment prevented the growth of tumor cells present in the lungs before the primary tumors were removed.

Paclitaxel’s toxicity activates an inflammatory protein—nuclear factor-kappa beta—that induces metastasis, but curcumin inhibits this response. The finding that adding curcumin to paclitaxel results in reduced metastases could allow for a lower dose of the potentially toxic drug to be administered.

Lead researcher Bharat Aggarwal, PhD, commented, “We are excited about the results of the study and the possible implications for taking the findings into the clinic in the next several years. At this time, advanced breast cancer is a difficult foe to fight with few proven treatments available after surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy.”

Source: Bharat B. Aggarwal, Shishir Shishodia, Yasunari Takada, Sanjeev Banerjee, Robert A. Newman, Carlos E. Bueso-Ramos, and Janet E. Price.  Curcumin Suppresses the Paclitaxel-Induced Nuclear Factor-B Pathway in Breast Cancer Cells and Inhibits Lung Metastasis of Human Breast Cancer in Nude Mice. Clin. Cancer Res. 2005 11: 7490-7498.