How cardamom could help tackle breast cancer

ACCORDING to an American study, cardamom, a plant of Indian origin, could fight against triple negative breast cancer cells. This discovery could enable scientists to look for new ways to fight this kind of cancer, which may develop resistance to the usual treatments.

Cardamom has many natural virtues, including therapeutic properties. According to researchers at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, this plant could help fight against triple negative breast cancer cells. Its effectiveness is attributed to cardamonin, a natural component present in the spice.

Triple-negative breast cancers are a significant health issue because they are difficult to treat. They develop with no known markers on the surface of the cancer cells that would respond to a known targeted therapy, explains the Institut Curie research center.

To conduct their research, Dr. Patricia Mendonca and colleagues studied the effects of cardamonin on two triple-negative breast cancer cell lines -- one composed of cells from African American women and the other of cells from Caucasian women.

The researchers observed how cardamonin affected the expression of the Ligand-1 (PD-L1) gene, which is responsible for programmed cell death. In patients with triple-negative breast cancer, PD-L1 is over-expressed, "and plays a critical role in helping breast cancer cells evade the body's immune system," the study explains.

The researchers found that cardamonin treatment could decrease the viability of cancer cells in both African-American and Caucasian patients. In addition, it reduced PD-L1 expression in the Caucasian cell line but not the African American cell line.

"This is the first study to describe cardamonin's inhibitory effect on the expression of PD-L1, which is relevant for the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer," said Mendonca. "These findings add support to other research that has shown differences in the tumor microenvironment between African and non-African Americans." More research is needed before the treatment can be tested on humans.