Milk Thistle Promising for Colorectal Cancer Prevention

Colorectal cancer stem cells thrive in conditions of inflammation. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2014 shows that the chemical silibinin, purified from milk thistle extract, affects cell signaling associated with inflammation and thus also the formation and survival of colorectal cancer stem cells.

“We have been deeply involved in this line of research that extends from silibinin to its chemopreventive properties in colorectal cancer, and the current study takes another important step: we see both a likely chemopreventive mechanism and the result of this mechanism in animal models,” says Sushil Kumar, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Rajesh Agarwal, PhD, co-program leader of Cancer Prevention and Control at the CU Cancer Center and professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

The group compared mice chemically treated to develop inflammation-dependent colorectal cancer…