New Research Curry, broccoli may halt prostate cancer Archived article from Jan 23, 2006 By Joseph Blumberg   A research team has found that the curry spice turmeric holds potential for the treatment and prevention of prostate cancer, particularly when combined with certain vegetables. Ah-Ng Tony Kong, a professor of pharmaceutics at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, and his colleagues tested turmeric, also known as curcumin, along with phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC), a naturally occurring substance abundant in a group of vegetables that includes cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and turnips. For Kong’s study, researchers used mice bred so that their immune systems would not reject foreign biological material and injected them with cells from human prostate cancer cell lines to grow tumors against which the compounds could be tested. The researchers injected the mice with turmeric or PEITC, alone or in combination, three times a week for four weeks, one day before the introduction of the prostate cancer cells. They found the injections significantly retarded the growth of cancerous tumors. “The bottom line is that PEITC and curcumin, alone or in combination, demonstrate significant cancer-preventive qualities in laboratory mice, and the combination of PEITC and curcumin could be effective in treating established prostate cancers,” Kong says. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the United States, with a half-million new cases each year. The authors noted that in contrast to the high incidence of prostate cancer in the US, the incidence of this disease is low in India. This has been attributed to the consumption of large amounts of plant-based foods rich in phytochemicals, non-nutritive plant chemicals that have protective or disease-preventive properties. The discovery was announced in the Jan. 15 issue of the journal Cancer Research. Return to the Jan 23, 2006 issue

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