Researchers specializing in the health benefits of plant compounds have shown that quercetin, a phytonutrient found in abundance in strawberries and other fruits, can induce programmed self-destruction of human cancer cells.
This process, called "apoptosis," is important in cancer prevention because it is one of the primary ways the body eliminates damaged cells. Quercetin and whole strawberry extract also inhibited the proliferation of cancer cells. The study is published in a recent edition of the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry.
In this study, researchers sought to identify the mechanisms through which fruit extracts or their components may exert protective effects on human liver cancer cells. Human hepatoma HepG2, a transformed cell line that permits the study of antiproliferative factors for liver cancer research, was used.
Quercetin was the most active polyphenol among the pure compounds tested, showing a dramatic reduction in cell viability (up to 80 percent) after 18 hours of treatment. Significant cell death from treatment with the strawberry extract was also shown to be dose- and time-dependent.