Remember that old saying -- An apple a day keeps the doctor away? Well, it seems that an apple peel a day might keep cancer at bay, according to a new study.

A dozen compounds have been found called triterpenoids. These compounds found in the peel of an apple either inhibit or kill cancer cells in lab cultures.

"We found that several compounds have potent anti-proliferative activities against human liver, colon and breast cancer cells and may be partially responsible for the anti-cancer activities of whole apples," says Rui Hai Liu, Cornell associate professor of food science.

Previous studies have shown that apples not only fight cancer cells in the laboratory but they also have shown to reduce the number and size of mammary tumors in rats.

So, don't peel those apples. Eat the whole thing!

Researchers from Dartmouth Medical School say they have a new way of identifying a deadly form of breast cancer that plagues 17 to 37 percent of all breast cancer patients and mostly premenopausal black women.

Identification comes in the form of locating the marker nestin -- a long filamentous protein indicating the presence of basal epithelial tumors -- which makes this type of cancer hard to diagnose and hard to treat. It also puts patients at high risk for recurrence, marked by a very short time between treatment and relapse.

"Ideally, a marker like nestin would enable clinicians to monitor these patients through frequent tests of a biomarker and, in doing so, detect the cancer before it has a chance to come back," says one professor.

Researchers must now find an effective means of detecting nestin in a clinical screening setting. It won't be as simple as a blood test -- but a non-invasive collection of mammary duct samples may enable the development of a screening tool for at-risk patients.

A study that appears in the December issue of Science reports that a chemical compound called mifepristone present in the abortion pill may prevent breast tumors from developing. The compound has been found to prevent the growth of breast tumors caused by the mutant gene responsible for breast and ovarian cancers.

Mifepristone showed to prohibit progesterone, a hormone involved with the female reproductive cycle. Women who are diagnosed with BRCA 1 mutation often have their breasts or ovaries removed to reduce the risk of developing cancer.

Eva Lee, lead author of the study and professor of developmental cell biology and biological chemistry, says "We found that progesterone plays a role in the development of breast cancer by encouraging the proliferation of mammary cells that carry a breast cancer gene. Mifepristone can block that response. We're excited about this discovery and hope it leads to new options for women with a high risk for developing breast cancer".

BRCA 1 is widely studied by cancer geneticists because a mutated version of this gene significantly raises the possibility of breast or ovarian cancers. By age 70, more than 50 percent of women with the mutated gene with develop breast or ovarian cancer. The researchers studied mice with the BRCA 1 mutation. The mice that were treated with mifepristone, an anti-progesterone compound did not develop breast cancer by the time they reached one year of age. All of the untreated mice developed tumors by eight months of age.

The researchers found that progesterone encourages the development of cancer when the mutated BRCA 1 gene is present because it speeds up the division of cancer cells. Mifepristone was found to block a binding process that is necessary for progesterone to cause the cell division. The researchers feel that anti-progesterone therapy could provide women with an increased risk for breast cancer with more treatment options in the future.

Spotted Calamity Jane, my Dalmatian, was 3 1/2-years-old when she was determined to have breast cancer. I spotted this when checking her breasts after she was near completion of breast feeding her litter of 11 pups. At that time my vet was not concerned that the little marble sized lump would turn out to be cancer thinking it was probably where a pup had bit her harder than normal while nursing.

I had already made the decision to have Cally spayed after this one and only litter, so I gave the go ahead to have my vet remove the lump in her breast and biopsy it for safety.  We were all shocked to find out the results from the tumor biopsy was indeed cancer. I questioned whether chemo or any other kind of treatment was necessary and my vet felt like all of the lump had been removed and that there should not be any alarm for it to grow or spread.