Lycopene Inhibits Skin Cancer Cells Spreading in Vitro

By Kyle J. Norton

Skin cancer is a medical condition associated with irregular cell growth in the skin tissues.

Most cases of skin cancer start in the cells on the surface of the outermost inner lining tissue before penetrating into deeper layers.

After growing in size at the advanced stage, the cells of the tumor may travel a distance away to infect other healthy tissue and organs through blood and fluids circulation.

Most common secondary metastasis of skin cancer is breast, lung, and colon.

Believe it or not, more people are diagnosed with skin cancer each year in the U.S. than all other cancers combined. As of today, there are 58 million American are living with skin cancer.

Approximately, 1 in 5 Americans will develop skin cancer by the age of 70.

If you have experienced some of the symptoms such as a sore that doesn't heal or comes back after healing, a pale white or yellow flat areas that look like scars, raised and scaly red patches, small, smooth and shiny lumps that are pearly white, pink or red, a pink growth with raised edges and indents in the center and a growth that has small blood vessels on the surface of the skin, you may be on the early stage of skin cancer, please check with your doctor immediately.

The 5-year survival of among all people with melanoma of the skin is 92% compared to 100% of the localized skin cancer.

Out of many prevalent factors that cause skin cancer, some researchers suggested exposure to UVB are one most risk associated with skin cancer onset in the US.

Dr. Calzavara-Pinton P, the lead scientist said, "BCC is much more strongly related to measures of intermittent ultraviolet exposure (particularly those of childhood or adolescence) than to measures of cumulative exposure".

And, " In contrast, SCC is more strongly related to constant or cumulative sun exposure. Photobiological studies have clarified that sunlight and UVB radiation are complete carcinogens for AK and SCC although the relationship with UVA exposure is much less known".

Lycopene is a phytochemical in the class of carotenoid, a natural pigment with no vitamin A activity found abundantly in tomatoes and other red fruits and vegetables, such as red carrots, watermelons, and papayas,

Tomatoes provide about 80% of the lycopene in the world diet. In plants, lycopene protects the host against excessive photodamage and perform various functions in photosynthesis.

In the urgency to find a natural compound for the treatment of skin cancer without side effects, researchers evaluated the effect of lycopene, a kind of carotenoid inhibitory function on skin tumor cell migration.

In the human sSCC cell line COLO-16 selected to the study, administration of lycopene inhibited the cell proliferation and migration of COLO-16 cells without affecting the normal keratinocytes.

Furthermore, the inhibitory activity was found by exhibiting Zonula occludens (ZO)-1, inhibition of ZO-1 expression and its failure to accumulate at cell junctions (ZO-1 and claudin-1) have been found to induce cancer progression.

In other words, lycopene inhibited the SCC cell line COLO-16 proliferation by enhancing the expression of the tight junction complexes that regulate the permeability of epithelial against cancer cells.

Additionally, cell cycle division proteins (JNK and ERK ) in the induction of mitogen associated with the decreasing levels of ZO-1 and claudin-1 were also inhibited by the injection of lycopene.

More precisely, lycopene inhibited the progression of human sSCC cell line COLO-16 by reducing the proteins involved in promoting cell cycle division and increasing cancer cell permeability and autophagy,

Based on the findings researchers said, "This study indicates that lycopene might be a useful chemopreventive agent against cSCC".

Taken altogether, lycopene may be considered supplements for the prevention and treatment of skin cancer, pending on the confirmation of the larger sample size and multicenter human study.

Intake of lycopene in the form of supplement should be taken with extreme care to prevent overdose acute liver toxicity.

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Author Biography
Kyle J. Norton (Scholar, Master of Nutrition, All right reserved)
Health article writer and researcher; Over 10.000 articles and research papers have been written and published online, including worldwide health, ezine articles, article base, health blogs, self-growth, best before it's news, the karate GB daily, etc.,.
Named TOP 50 MEDICAL ESSAYS FOR ARTISTS & AUTHORS TO READ by Disilgold.com Named 50 of the best health Tweeters Canada - Huffington Post
Nominated for shorty award over last 4 years
Some articles have been used as references in medical research, such as international journal Pharma and Bioscience, ISSN 0975-6299.

Sources
(1) Lycopene upregulates ZO-1 and downregulates claudin-1 through autophagy inhibition in the human cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma cell line COLO-16 by Bi S1,2, Li L1, Gu H1, Li M1, Xu S1, Bu W1, Zhang M1, Zhou Z2, Chen X. (PubMed)
(2) Suppressive effects of lycopene and β-carotene on the viability of the human esophageal squamous carcinoma cell line EC109 by Ngoc NB1,2, Lv P1,3, Zhao WE1. (PubMed)