URI undergraduate finds Jamun berry could treat breast cancer

12/04/08 - A University of Rhode Island undergraduate student has possibly discovered a new, nontoxic and completely pain-free treatment for breast cancer.Caroline Killian, 26, an undergraduate chemistry major, is working with URI professor Navindra Seeram in the Fellowship Research Program to discover cancer canceling effects of a purple berry called Jambolana, or the Jamun berry.

While the berries have been used in the past as a pre-insulin treatment for diabetes, they were never considered for cancer treatment before the pair's research.

Seeram, is involved with much of the natural products chemistry research at URI, but this discovery is the most significant, Killian said.

Jamun berries are unique in that they combat most types of breast cancer, including what is called a triple negative. It is called this because the diagnosis and some treatment options of breast cancer require the presence or absence of three key indicators, or receptors. The combination of these receptors usually tells doctors what type of breast cancer they're dealing with.

But in the case of the triple negative, none of these indicators are identifiable, making diagnosis and treatment very difficult.

"We know that there are these three lock and key spots on these types of breast cancer," she said. "We can target the lock and key indicators, but for triple negatives ... we have no way of attacking this cancer."

Chemotherapy treatments have been known to reduce and inhibit the growth of the triple negative breast cancer type, but the cancer has a higher chance of recurrence than other, more common forms of breast cancer.

Killian also said the only available treatment for this type of breast cancer is a mastectomy or chemo, but she and Seeram hope to change that.

"[Chemo] is just an indiscriminant spraying of chemicals," she said.

The Jamun berry will hopefully put an end to chemo treatments, for breast cancer patients at least, and Killian said since it successfully reacted with both the triple negative and other more common breast cancer forms in laboratory research, it is very possible the berries can provide a safer and viable treatment alternative.

Killian said they do not know the reason the berries are so effective, but she believes it has something to do with their purple pigment. When she and Seeram mashed up the berries and refined them to their finest elements, they found characteristics of the pigment to be responsible for cancer inhibition.

"While I do have a fondness for speculation, we don't know exactly why the purple pigment, in particular [is responsible]," she said. "But we do know that the pigments that are responsible for purple, blue and red [found in plants] have the same molecule called anthocyanins, and they are medicinally active."

She pointed out berries in general have been observed to be particularly effective in targeting the reproductive organs, as the phytochemicals derived from berries have been shown to inhibit growth in both prostate and breast cancers. She added there is currently a research initiative to study the effect of strawberries on colon cancer.

"A berry itself is like a ripened, sexual organ of a plant," she said. "Why a ripened sexual organ of a plant has medicinal activity on the sexual organs of human beings? That might be a question for the ages, but does it have an effect? Have we seen effects on sexual organs from the berry compounds? Yes, definitely. As to why they work, now that's the question I would like to know the answer to."

The original discovery of the Jamun berry's medicinal effects was collaboration between Seeram and Killian at URI and Lynn Adams, a breast cancer researcher at City of Hope Hospital in California.

"It was so exciting," Killian said. "In science you have no idea how many times you work towards a goal and get no results or strange results, and then to have something that confirmed the medicinal activity of this plant. I mean that's what it's all about, right? Curing cancer."

Not originally a URI student, Killian started her college career as a classical literature major at St. John's College in New Mexico. She studied Greek and Latin literature and religious texts. She received her bachelor's degree and came to URI where she discovered an interest in plants. After she met one of the greenhouse gardeners, who introduced her to Seeram, she started the fellowship research program.

"I stumbled into Dr. Seeram's laboratory one day," she said. "And I've been having so much fun since that I've decided to pursue natural products chemistry.