Components in making pomegranate juice that stall the movement of cancer cells and likewise act to weaken attraction to chemical signal that promotes prostate cancer spread has been identified according to studies conducted by researchers at the University of California, Riverside. This breakthrough could lead to new cure or prevention of the spread of cancer itself. The experiment was done at the laboratory of Manuela Martins-Green, a cell biology professor in the said school.

In the United States, prostate cancer is the one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths found in men. To this day, there is no cure for prostate cancer. If this disease recurs after getting treatments like a surgery or radiation, the usual treatment will be the suppression of testosterone or the male hormones that inhibit cancer cell growth. As cancer develops its own ways in order to resist hormonal suppression therapies, it becomes more aggressive and spreads to the lungs, bone marrow, lymph nodes and eventually resulting to deaths.

The laboratory applied the juice on the laboratory-cultured prostate C cells which were resistant to the male hormones; the more it is resistant to the hormones gives it more possibilities to spread. Martins-Green, Lei Wang, a graduate student and two undergrads Andre Alcon and Jeffrey Ho have found out the tumor cells which did not die from the pomegranate juice treatment even showed increase in cell adhesion and has a decrease in cell migration. The researchers identified these components in the juice as flavones, phenylpropanoids, hydro benzoic acids and conjugated fatty acids. These active groups had molecular impact on the abovementioned activities.

Identification of these components could help modify cancer-restraining constituents in the pomegranate juice to help improve the functions and by making them more effective prevention-wise against prostate cancer spread and likewise giving more efficient drug therapies. Martins-Green averred that due to the genes’ and proteins’ involvement in the activity of this type of cancer are as vital as those involving movement of prostate cancer cells, the modified components of the juice have wider impact in the treatment of cancer. She explained that the important protein which is produced inside the bone marrow can cause cancer cells move towards the bone where they can develop into new tumors.

The researchers showed that pomegranate juice remarkably inhibits the purpose of this particular protein and can potentially prevent prostate cancer cells to spread to the bones. She stated that the laboratory plans to conduct another series of tests for an in vivo form for prostate cancer spread in order to determine if the same cancer-restraining components working in cultured cells could deter the spread without giving side effects.