PARIS, April 4 (Benin News) –
Cardamon, a natural compound found in cardamom and other plants, may have therapeutic potential against triple-negative breast cancer, according to a study conducted on human cancer cells by researchers at the University of Florida (USA). United).
About 10-15% of breast cancers are triple negative, which means they don’t have estrogen or progesterone receptors and don’t produce excessive amounts of a protein called HER2. These tumors are difficult to treat because they do not respond to hormone therapies used for other types of breast cancer. They also tend to be more aggressive and have a higher mortality rate than other breast cancers.
“Developing a targeted therapy for triple-negative breast cancer that is both safe and effective has been a real challenge. For this reason, it is absolutely necessary to study medicinal plants as a new way to fight this cancer,” said the experts, who will present the study at the annual meeting of the American Society for Investigative Pathology as part of the Experimental Biology (EB) 2022 meeting, taking place April 2-5 in Philadelphia.
For this new study, the researchers investigated how cardamonin affected the expression of the PD-L1 gene (programmed cell death ligand 1), present in tumor cells. PD-L1 is overexpressed during breast cancer progression and plays a key role in helping cancer cells evade the body’s immune system.
The researchers used two genetically different triple-negative breast cancer cell lines: one from African-American women and the other from European (Caucasian) women. They found that cardamonin treatment caused a dose-dependent decrease in cell viability in both cell lines.
Furthermore, it also reduced the expression of PD-L1 in the Caucasian cell line but not in the African American cell line, indicating that cells of different races may respond differently to cardamonin due to genetic variations between the breeds.
“This is the first study to describe the inhibitory effect of cardamonin on PD-L1 expression, which is relevant for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer. These results support other research that has shown differences in the tumor microenvironment between African Americans and non-African Americans,” the experts concluded.