MitoQ Inhibits Human Breast Cancer Cell Migration, Invasion and Clonogenicity
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) accounts for between 10-20% of all breast cancers in women and has a poor prognosis. TNBC can have an aggressive disease progression and once treated, the cancer has a 50% chance of recurring locally or metastasizing. This is partly because treatment options for TNBC are limited, as there are few receptors on the cancer cells available to be targeted.
While investigating alternative TNBC therapies, researchers from UC Louvain have discovered that the commercially available supplement, Mitoquinol mesylate (MitoQ), was able to significantly reduce metastases reoccurrence in a mouse model of human TNBC.
Study Findings
Triple-negative human MDA-MB-231 cells that were pre-treated with Mitoquinol before injection caused significantly fewer metastases in mice than those that were treated with the vehicle control (figure 1).
Mitoquinol treatment: 36.4% of mice were lung metastases free, 27.2% had less than two lung metastases, and 36.4% had more than two lung metastases.
Control treatment: 11.1% were lung metastases free, and 88.9% of mice presented more than two lung metastases.
To ensure that this was not an effect of Mitoquinol causing breast cancer cell death, researchers conducted a second experiment where Mitoquinol (18-20 mg/kg) was administered to mice orally 72 hours after tumor take. Researchers also investigated rates of tumor recurrence by removing primary tumors after four weeks and assessing for new growth. Mitoquinol did not inhibit primary tumor growth but largely prevented local tumor recurrence.
Post-surgery, primary tumors relapsed in 100% of vehicle-treated control mice compared to only 25% of mice treated with Mitoquinol.
Tumors in Mitoquinol-treated mice also grew at a slower rate.
After sacrifice on day 56, 78.9% of mice treated with Mitoquinol had no metastasis at all, compared to 9.5% treated with control.
Additionally, researchers found that Mitoquinol does not interfere with chemotherapy-induced breast cancer cell killing in vitro.
