We all know that ginger is a healthy addition to any meal, and that
it can reduce nausea and inflammation in the human body. It’s a food
with curative powers that have been highly regarded for centuries,
though science is still unlocking its secrets. Coincidentally, three
researchers from the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in India may
have just stumbled upon one of those secrets, and it will likely have
far-reaching implications for the cancer treatment field.
They’ve found that there is a chemical in ginger called 6-shogaol, which
has an impressive effect against breast cancer cells. It also targets
cancer stem cells in particular, which are largely responsible for
spreading cancer throughout the body, as well spurring the growth of
tumors that have been previously treated with chemo or surgery. And best
of all, it is effective at doses that aren’t harmful to noncancerous
cells, unlike chemotherapy.
In
fact, the researchers decided to see how 6-shogaol would stack up
against a traditional chemotherapy drug known as taxol. While taxol is
known to inhibit ordinary cancer cells (and cause a host of awful side effects)
it still struggles to eliminate cancer stem cells. The researchers
tested the taxol at a concentration that was 10,000 times higher than
their 6-shogaol samples, and it still wasn’t as effective at destroying
cancer stem cells as the ginger chemical.
As for how 6-shogaol works in the human body, the researchers found 6 different ways that it can inhibit cancer growth.
- It reduces the expression of CD44/CD24 cancer stem cell surface markers in breast cancer spheroids (3-dimensional cultures of cells modeling stem cell like cancer)
- It significantly affects the cell cycle, resulting in increased cancer cell death
- It induces programmed cell death primarily through the induction of autophagy, with apoptosis a secondary inducer
- It inhibits breast cancer spheroid formation by altering Notch signaling pathway through γ-secretase inhibition.
- It exhibits cytotoxicity (cell killing properties) against monolayer (1-dimensional cancer model) and spheroid cells (3-dimensional cancer model)
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