A pepper component used to turn up heat in jalapeqos, Capsaicin, could be useful to drive and kill prostate cancer cells besides burning up the tongue, as per a study appearing in an issue of Cancer Research.

Capsaicin is effective for programming cell death or apoptosis of the prostate cancer cells, according to a team of researchers from the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in collaboration with colleagues from UCLA.

From News-Medical.Net:

Capsaicin induced approximately 80 percent of prostate cancer cells growing in mice to follow the molecular pathways leading to apoptosis. Prostate cancer tumors treated with capsaicin were about one-fifth the size of tumors in non-treated mice.

“Capsaicin had a profound anti-proliferative effect on human prostate cancer cells in culture,” said Svren Lehmann, M.D., Ph.D., visiting scientist at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the UCLA School of Medicine. “It also dramatically slowed the development of prostate tumors formed by those human cell lines grown in mouse models.”

Lehmann estimated that the dose of pepper extract fed orally to the mice was equivalent to giving 400 milligrams of capsaicin three times a week to a 200 pound man, roughly equivalent to between three and eight fresh habaqera peppers - depending on the pepper’s capsaicin content. Habaqeras are the highest rated pepper for capsaicin content according to the Scoville heat index. Habaqero peppers, which are native to the Yucatan, typically contain up to 300,000 Scoville units. The more popular Jalapeqo variety from Oaxaca, Mexico, and the southwest United States, contains 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units.

Capsaicin prevents the progression of cancer cells by regulating androgen receptors that are steroid activated proteins controlling expression of certain growth related genes. The pepper component is also effective in preventing the molecular mechanism participating in pathways (NF-kappa Beta) that leads to apoptosis of different cell types.