Researchers from Sookmyung Women’s University in South Korea found that ginsenoside Rg5 exhibits anti-breast cancer efficacy through three mechanisms of action.
Breast cancer has reportedly been the second biggest threat to woman health and a large number of women are haunted by this horrible disease. Chemotherapy, one of the commonest options for breast cancer treatment, is effective but the frequent use can lead to drug resistance as well as many side effects. For this reason, scientists are consistently on the lookout for the better.
Researchers from Sookmyung Women’s University in South Korea explored antitumor activity against MCF-7 breast cancer cells to target ginsenoside Rg5. They found that ginsenoside Rg5 exhibits anti-breast cancer activity through three mechanisms of actions, namely, exerting cytotoxicity, inhibiting cell cycle and inducing cell apoptosis of breast cancer.
Exerting cytotoxicity on breast cancer cells
Like many chemotherapeutic drugs, ginsenoside Rg5 is cytotoxic to breast cancer cells. As shown in the experiments, ginsenoside Rg5 reduced the breast cancer cell viability in a dose-dependent manner.
More noticeably, ginsenoside Rg5 shows no cytotoxic effects on normal cells, thus avoiding the same side effects as chemotherapeutic drugs.
Inhabiting breast cancer cell cycle
The cell cycle is the series of events that take place in a cell leading to its division and duplication of its DNA.The study found that the Rg5 treatment can induce breast cancer cells arrest in the G0/G1 phase of cell cycle, thus inhibiting the proliferation of breast cancer cells.
Inducing breast cancer cell apoptosis
Apoptosis is a process of programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms. The study found that ginsenoside Rg5 can regulate the apoptosis-related proteins and fuel breast cancer cell apoptosis. The effect of ginsenoside Rg5 on inducing breast cancer apoptosis presents a dose-dependent relationship: the higher the dose, the stronger the ability to induce apoptosis.
The findings of the study reveal that ginsenoside Rg5 exhibits anti-breast cancer activity through a variety of mechanisms of action. This suggests that ginsenoside Rg5 is a promising candidate for breast cancer and has great potential as a cancer therapeutic drugs, and cancer treatment with ginsenoside Rg5 exerts better effects.