Grape seed extract and doxorubicin extinguish breast cancer cells.

2004 JUN 3 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Grape seed extract and doxorubicin extinguish breast carcinoma cells.

According to a study from the United States, "with an approach to enhance the efficacy of chemotherapy agents against breast cancer treatment, here we investigated the anticancer effects of grape seed extract (GSE) and doxorubicin (Dox), either alone or in combination, in estrogen receptor-positive MCF-7 and receptor-negative MDA-MB468 human breast carcinoma cells.

"GSE (25-200 mcg/ml) treatment of cells resulted in 16%-72% growth inhibition and 9%-33% cell death, in a dose- and a time-dependent manner. In other studies, Dox (10-100 nM) treatment showed 23%-96% growth inhibition and 10%-55% cell death. Based on these results, several combinations of GSE (25-100 mcg/ml) with Dox (10-75 nM) were next assessed for their synergistic, additive and/or antagonistic efficacy towards cell growth inhibition and death," said G. Sharma and colleagues, University of Colorado, Health Sciences Center.

"In both MCF-7 and MDA-MB468 cells, a combination of 100 mcg/ml GSE with 25-75 nM Dox treatment for 48 h showed a strong synergistic effect [combination index (CI)

"In quantitative apoptosis studies, GSE and Dox alone and in combination showed comparable apoptotic death of MCF-7 cells, however, a combination of the two was inhibitory to Dox induced apoptosis in MDA-MB468 cells. This was further confirmed in another estrogen receptor-negative MDA-MB231 cell line, in which GSE and Dox combination strongly inhibited cell growth but did not show any increase in apoptotic cell death caused by Dox," ...