Futurity.org ? Vitamin D helps body put brakes on cancer

Although vitamin D can be obtained from limited dietary sources and directly from exposure to the sun during the spring and summer months, the combination of poor dietary intake and sun avoidance has created vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency in large proportions of many populations worldwide. (Credit: "sunlight in window" via Shutterstock)

MCGILL (CAN) ? Vitamin D appears to slow down the production of a protein that drives cell division and that is active at elevated levels in more than half of all cancers.

The active form of vitamin D acts by several mechanisms to inhibit both the production and function of the protein cMYC, according to a study published in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

?For years, my lab has been dedicated to studying the molecular mechanisms of vitamin D in human cancer cells, particularly its role in stopping their proliferation,? says John White, a professor in McGill University?s physiology department. ?We discovered that vitamin D controls both the rate of production and the degradation of cMYC.

?More importantly, we found that vitamin D strongly stimulates the production of a natural antagonist of cMYC called MXD1, essentially shutting down cMYC function?.

The team also applied vitamin D to the skin of mice and observed a drop in the level of cMYC and found evidence of a decrease in its function. Moreover, other mice, which lacked the specific receptor for vitamin D, were found to have strongly elevated levels of cMYC in a number of tissues including skin and the lining of the colon.

?Taken together, our results show that vitamin D puts the brakes on cMYC function, suggesting that it may slow the progression of cells from premalignant to malignant states and keep their proliferation in check.

?We hope that our research will encourage people to maintain adequate vitamin D supplementation and will stimulate the development of large, well-controlled cancer chemoprevention trials to test the effects of adequate supplementation,? says White.

Although vitamin D can be obtained from limited dietary sources and directly from exposure to the sun during the spring and summer months, the combination of poor dietary intake and sun avoidance has created vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency in large proportions of many populations worldwide.

It is known that vitamin D has a wide range of physiological effects and that correlations exist between insufficient amounts of vitamin D and an increased incidence of a number of cancers. These correlations are particularly strong for cancers of the digestive tract, including colon cancer, and certain forms of leukemia.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the National Cancer Institute/Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute supported the work.

Source: McGill University

Source: http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/vitamin-d-helps-body-put-brakes-on-cancer/

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