Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and UCLA researchers report habanero peppers have the power to drive prostate cancer cells to
commit suicide. Capsaicin, the compound that puts the hot in habanero peppers, and can cause a diner's forehead to
break out in a beaded sweat, is responsible for inducing the death of prostate cancer cells. “Capsaicin had a profound anti-proliferative effect on human prostate cancer cells in culture,” said Dr. Sören Lehmann, 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.”
Capsaicin caused approximately 80 percent of prostate cancer cells growing in mice to follow the pathways leading to cellular death. Prostate cancer tumors treated with capsaicin were about one-fifth the size of tumors in non-treated mice. Depending on capsaicin content, Dr. Lehmann estimates that the dose of pepper extract fed orally to the mice was equivalent to a 200 pound man consuming about three-to-eight fresh habanero peppers a week.
