14 DAY TRIAL // A new research carried out by the University of California, Riverside, could lead to new drug therapies to fight cancer, since it's found several components in pomegranate juice, that inhibit the movement of cancer cells and keep them away from moving on to the bone.
The research was performed in the lab of Manuela Martins-Green, a professor of cell biology at UCR, where pomegranate juice was applied on prostate cancer cells that were resistant to testosterone, grown in the laboratory.
Normally, the more resistant a cancer cell is to testosterone, the more prone it is to metastasizing, but the researchers found that tumor cells who had been treated with pomegranate juice and had not died with the treatment, showed increased cell adhesion (meaning fewer cells breaking away) and decreased cell migration.
Martins-Green worked on this research with graduate student Lei Wang and undergraduate students Andre Alcon and Jeffrey Ho, and they managed to isolate the active groups of ingredients in pomegranate juice, that had a molecular impact on cell adhesion and migration in metastatic prostate cancer cells; these are hydrobenzoic acids, phenylpropanoids, flavones and conjugated fatty acids.
“Having identified them, we can now modify cancer-inhibiting components in pomegranate juice to improve their functions and make them more effective in preventing prostate cancer metastasis, leading to more effective drug therapies,” said Martins-Green.
“Because the genes and proteins involved in the movement of prostate cancer cells are essentially the same as those involved in the movement of other types of cancer cells, the same modified components of the juice could have a much broader impact in cancer treatment.”
The researcher explained that there is an important protein produced in the bone marrow, that causes the cancer cells to move to the bone and form new tumors.
“We show that pomegranate juice markedly inhibits the function of this protein, and thus this juice has the potential of preventing metastasis of the prostate cancer cells to the bone,” she added.
Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men in the United States, and for now, there is no effective cure for it.
The cancer cells need testosterone to grow, so if prostate cancer comes up again after treatments of surgery and/or radiation, the next logic step is the suppression of this hormone, thus inhibiting the growth of the cancer cells.
The problem is that in time, the cancer finds new ways of resisting hormone suppression therapies, starts being very aggressive, and metastasizes to the bone marrow, lungs, and lymph nodes, causing the patient’s death.
Now Martins-Green's lab, wants to perform additional tests in an in vivo model for prostate cancer metastasis, to find out whether the same components that inhibit cancer in cultured cells, can effectively prevent metastasis without side effects.
This research was presented yesterday at the 50th annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology taking place in Philadelphia.