Broccoli is one of cabbage family plants, People eat the green flower of broccoli as a type of vegetables. Broccoli is known as a reach plant with vitamin C, fibers and it also contains anti cancer compounds such as diindolylmethane and selenium.
Researchers of Johns Hopkins University and Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center have reached the importance of Broccoli fighting Breast cancer in particular.
Researchers at the Institute of Food Research (IFR) believe that sulforaphane can boost the body’s own anti-cancer weapons.
Sulforaphane is produced by the body when we eat glucoraphanin, a compound found in broccoli.
It is thought sulforaphane turns on genes that boost antioxidant levels and blocks a family of enzymes called HDAC that prevents the body from suppressing tumours.
It may even encourage the body to make other enzymes that excrete carcinogens.
Research also shows it may stop the development of cancer stem-cells that are resistant to chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
The two new trials using broccoli-based medicines are both based in America.
At Johns Hopkins University and the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, women with breast cancer are being given sulforaphane daily for two weeks to see if it slows the growth of tumours and increases levels of protective enzymes in breast tissue.
Meanwhile, at the Knight Cancer Institute in Oregon, researchers are looking at whether broccoli extract taken three times a day for up to two months slows the growth of tumour cells.
On the other way scientists from Florida’s and Texas’s A&M Universities say that diindolylmethane (DIM), which is found in cruciferous vegetables, is the active ingredient that can beat even triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), the most aggressive type that affects around 20% of all sufferers.
What is more, the new compound is more effective, and less debilitating, than current conventional treatments available, such as chemotherapy.
TNBC is one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer; it grows faster, spreads to other parts of the body earlier, is harder to detect on a mammogram and recurs more often.
Drug treatment for TNBC is, in addition, so toxic that it can make the patient sicker and chemotherapy is generally ineffective.
The scientists say they are “confident” the new compound represents an effective and safe alternative and the fact it can combat TNBC is especially impressive.