Breast cancer is the most common
cancer and the second leading cause of
cancer death and morbidity among women in the western world. Pomegranate juice (PJ) and three of its specific components have been shown to inhibit processes involved in
prostate cancer metastasis. If this also proves to be true for
breast cancer, these natural treatments will be promising agents against
breast cancer that can serve as potentially effective and nontoxic alternatives or adjuncts to the use of conventional
selective estrogen receptor modulators for
breast cancer prevention and treatment. To test this possibility, we have used two
breast cancer cell lines, MDA-MB-231 cells (ER(-)) and MCF7 (ER(+)), and the non-neoplastic cell line MCF10A. We show that, in addition to inhibiting growth of the
breast cancer cells, PJ or a combination of its components
luteolin (L) +
ellagic acid (E) +
punicic acid (P) increase
cancer cell adhesion and decrease
cancer cell migration but do not affect normal cells. These treatments also inhibit chemotaxis of the
cancer cells to SDF1α, a
chemokine that attracts
breast cancer cells to the bone. We hypothesized that PJ and L + E + P stimulate expression of genes that increase adhesion and inhibit genes that stimulate cell migration and inhibit chemotaxis to SDF1α. Using qPCR, we confirmed these proposed effects on gene expression and in addition we found that a gene important in epithelial-to-meshenchymal transitions is decreased. We also found that pro-inflammatory
cytokines/
chemokines are significantly reduced by these treatments, thereby having the potential to decrease
inflammation and its impact on
cancer progression. Discovery that PJ and L + E + P are inhibitory of metastatic processes in
breast cancer cells in addition to
prostate cancer cells indicate that they are potentially a very effective treatment to prevent
cancer progression in general.