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Dietary stearate reduces human breast cancer metastasis burden in athymic nude mice

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Abstract

Stearate is an 18-carbon saturated fatty acid found in many foods in the western diet, including beef and chocolate. Stearate has been shown to have anti-cancer properties during early stages of neoplastic progression. However, previous studies have not investigated the effect of dietary stearate on breast cancer metastasis. In this study, we present evidence that exogenously supplied dietary stearate dramatically reduces the size of tumors that formed from injected human breast cancer cells within the mammary fat pads of athymic nude mice by approximately 50% and partially inhibits breast cancer cell metastasis burden in the lungs in this mouse model system. This metastatic inhibition appears to be independent of primary tumor size, as stearate fed animals that had primary tumors comparable in size to littermates fed either a safflower oil enriched diet or a low fat diet had reduced lung metastasis. Also stearate fed mice sub-groups had different primary tumor sizes but no difference in metastasis. This anti-metastasis effect may be due, at least in part, to the ability of stearate to induce apoptosis in these human breast cancer cells. Overall, this study suggests the possibility of dietary manipulation with selected long-chain saturated fatty acids such as stearate as a potential adjuvant therapeutic strategy for breast cancer patients wishing to maximize the suppression of metastatic disease.

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Abbreviations

DHA:

Docosahexaenoic acid

EPA:

Eicosapentaenoic acid

NK:

Natural kill T cells

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by Grant Number R21 AT 001636 (RWH) from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represents of the official views of the NCCAM, or the National Institutes of Health. This work was also funded in part by The Beef Checkoff.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, 35294, USA

    Lynda M. Evans & Robert W. Hardy

  2. Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 701 South 19th Street, LHRB Room 531, Birmingham, AL, 35294-0007, USA

    Eric C. Toline, Arig Ibrahim Hashim & Robert W. Hardy

  3. UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, 35294, USA

    Renee Desmond, Gene P. Siegal & Robert W. Hardy

  4. Departments of Cell Biology and Surgery, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, 35294, USA

    Gene P. Siegal

  5. Department of Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, KB 506, 1922 7th Ave South, 619 19th St S, Birmingham, AL, 35249-7331, USA

    Gene P. Siegal

Authors
  1. Lynda M. Evans
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  2. Eric C. Toline
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  3. Renee Desmond
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  4. Gene P. Siegal
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  5. Arig Ibrahim Hashim
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  6. Robert W. Hardy
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert W. Hardy.

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Evans, L.M., Toline, E.C., Desmond, R. et al. Dietary stearate reduces human breast cancer metastasis burden in athymic nude mice. Clin Exp Metastasis 26, 415–424 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10585-009-9239-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10585-009-9239-x

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