Tocomin inhibits prostate carcinogenesis

Carotech announces that study shows the potential of Tocomin as a chemopreventive agent against prostate cancer.

Published in the August issue of Nutrition and Cancer, researchers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, studied the anticancer properties of d-mixed tocotrienol complex towards prostate cancer in the transgenic adenocarcinoma mouse prostate (TRAMP) mouse model.

The researchers selected TRAMP mice model because it bears close resemblance to the various stages of human prostate cancer such as progression of the disease from early prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia lesions to a more aggressive metastatic adenocarcinoma.

In the supplemented group, TRAMP mice were fed 0.1 percent, 0.3 percent or one percent Tocomin diet for 16 weeks. TRAMP mice in the positive control group and normal (wild-type) non-transgenic mice were fed regular diet for 16 weeks. Mice in all groups were aged eight weeks old when the study began.

Throughout the study, all the mice were in good health condition with no significant change observed in body weights among mice fed Tocomin diet or normal diet.

However, the researchers observed significant reduction in the occurrence of prostate tumors in the Tocomin supplemented group compared to the control group. 38 percent, 33 percent and 22 percent of TRAMP mice in the 0.1 percent, 0.3 percent and one percent Tocomin diets, respectively, developed palpable tumors compared to 73 percent in the control group.

There were significantly fewer number of high-grade neoplastic (PIN) lesions and higher number of low-grade PIN in the Tocomin group while about 75 – 80 percent of the control mice had high-grade PIN and 25 – 30 percent with low-grade PIN.

Further analyses revealed that Tocomin significantly increased the expression of proapoptotic proteins BAD, cleaved caspase 3, cdk inhibitors p21 and P27 while suppressing the expression of cyclins A and E, compared to control. Increased levels of p21 and p27 drive the cancer cells to apoptosis by recruiting capases and BAD.

Control mice demonstrated enhanced expression of cyclins that led to uncontrolled proliferation of cancer cells, which resulted in tumor formation.

The researchers concluded that Tocomin effectively suppresses the progression of high-grade prostatic neoplastic lesions to fully developed tumors, by regulating cell cycle processes and increasing the production of proapoptotic proteins that led to an overall suppression of tumor formation.