Breast Cancer study was recently published in the American Journal of Biochemistry and Biotechnology demonstrating propolis’ effect on breast cancer cells.
This study was performed in a human breast carcinoma cell called MCF-7. The results demonstrated that an extract of propolis can indeed induce cell death in breast cancer cells. In just 24 hours the propolis extract was able to kill 13% of the cancer cells.
In another study published in the journal Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity (Volume 2016), the Propolis compound Caffeic Acid Phenethyl Ester (CAPE) was found to augment the effects of the widely used drug Tamoxifen.
Although Tamoxifen is one of the most widely used drug
s in managing breast cancer, many women still relapse after long-term therapy.
Scientists hoped to find a way to decrease the toxicity of Tamoxifen while increasing the effectiveness against MCF-7 cells.
In the study, MCF-7 cells were treated with different concentrations of Tamoxifen and/or CAPE for 48 hours. This novel combination exerted synergistic ‘cell killing’ effects against the breast cancer cells, primarily via induction of apoptosis. Apoptosis is programmed cell death.
The CAPE/Tamoxifen combo also decreased Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor levels which are a signal protein produced by cells that stimulate vasculogenesis and angiogenesis, both of which promote growth of the cancerous cells.
Scientists recently set out to investigate if Propolis could minimize the chemo therapy toxic side effects in cancer patients. Propolis has strong anti-oxident and free radical scavenging properties and the idea is that it might minimize the number of ‘healthy’ cells killed by the chemotherapy and thereby minimize the side effects of this nasty drug. Propolis could possibly act as a ‘protector’ of our healthy, non-cancerous cells while the chemo drug moves in and kills off the cancerous cells.
In other studies, propolis has been shown to kill prostate cancer and colon cancer cells. Researchers found that it caused the cancer cells to die by necrosis, which means that it interrupted the blood supply to the cell and caused just the local cancer cells to die while not harming healthy, living cells.