| | Category | ME | L13 | Inhibition of tumor cell growth with capsaicin in hot peppers |
| | Abstract | Conflicting studies have debated whether hot peppers and their primary |
| | compound capsaicin are causes or inhibitors of cancer. With this is mind, |
| | my purpose for experimentation was to determine whether the level of |
| | “hotness,” or capsaicin level, of a hot pepper would correlate to cancer |
| | cell killing activity in vitro. In order to test this, I made pepper extracts from |
| | ten different peppers varieties with different capsaicin levels, using |
| | ethanol to isolate the active compounds into a useable form. Extracts from |
| | both dried and fresh peppers were made because peppers for human |
| | consumption are commonly sold in both varieties. I used these extracts in |
| | carefully controlled concentrations to treat a variety of cancer cell lines |
| | and used multiple methods and assays to test cancer cell-killing and |
| | cancer growth inhibiting activity. Some of these methods included Trypan |
| | Blue assay to measure cell death, MTT assay to measure cell proliferation, |
| | VEGF assay to measure cancer metastasis, and Caspase 3/7 assay to |
| | measure apoptosis. The results showed that both fresh and dried pepper |
| | extracts were highly effective in killing cancer cells and inhibiting cell |
| | proliferation in multiple cancer cell lines including leukemia and breast cells |
| | in vitro. In addition, the extracts had little or no effect on non-cancerous |
| | control cells. Most interesting, however, was the fairly consistent and |
| | repeatable trend in which peppers with higher levels of capsaicin were |
| | more potent than peppers with lower levels of capsaicin. The results |
| | suggest that with further research, fresh and dried peppers or pepper |
| | extracts could eventually be effectively incorporated into anti-cancer drug |
| | treatments or preventive diets. |
| | Bibliography | W.L.Scoville, Note on capsicums. J Am Pharm Assoc 1 (1912) 453-454. |