Methyl-donor nutrients inhibit breast cancer cell growth

Lipotropes (methyl group containing nutrients, including methionine, choline, folate, and vitamin B(12)) are dietary methyl donors and cofactors that are involved in one-carbon metabolism, which is important for genomic DNA methylation reactions and nucleic acid synthesis. One-carbon metabolism provides methyl groups for all biological methylation pathways and is highly dependent on dietary supplementation of methyl nutrients. Nutrition is an important determinant of breast cancer risk and tumor behavior, and dietary intervention may be an effective approach to prevent breast cancer. Apoptosis is important for the regulation of homeostasis and tumorigenesis. The anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 may be a regulatory target in cancer therapy; controlling or modulating its expression may be a therapeutic strategy against breast cancer. In this study, the effects of lipotrope supplementation on the growth and death of human breast cancer cell lines T47D and MCF-7 were examined and found to inhibit growth of both T47D and MCF-7 cells. Furthermore, the ratios of apoptotic cells to the total number of cells were approximately 44% and 34% higher in the lipotrope-supplemented treatments of T47D and MCF-7 cancer cells, respectively, compared with the control treatments. More importantly, Bcl-2 protein expression was decreased by approximately 25% from lipotrope supplementation in T47D cells, suggesting that lipotropes can induce breast cancer cell death by direct downregulation of Bcl-2 protein expression. Cancer treatment failure is often correlated with Bcl-2 protein upregulation. These data may be useful in the development of effective nutritional strategies to prevent and reduce breast cancer in humans.