Vitamin D's Anti-cancer Properties Can Be Separated, Study Says

Filed in archive Drugs, Vaccines and Therapeutics on March 20, 2006

We all know that vitamin D is important for bone development and may even help protect against the development of some cancers. However, it should be the right dose; otherwise, it can lead to toxic overdose of calcium in the blood which is usually the case when large quantities of Vitamin D are used as anti-cancer. But there is good news: A research study done at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center indicates that it may be possible to separate the anticancer properties of vitamin D from its other functions.

The human body produces a lot of vitamin D from a brief exposure of the sun. The vitamin is made in the skin when a cholesterol-like molecule interacts with ultraviolet light. It has long been known that a lack of vitamin D can lead to the bone deformities associated with rickets, and the vitamin helps maintain calcium and phosphorous levels in bone and blood. Too much vitamin D, however, can spill calcium into the blood and lead to heart disease and death.

The study, as reported in the journal Molecular Cell, found that mutant forms of the protein that binds to vitamin D in the cell do not allow vitamin D to promote bone development and calcium transport but do permit it to regulate an oncogenic protein known as beta catenin. In addition, some modified forms of vitamin D itself (which do not alter bone and calcium) were also found to regulate beta-catenin.

According to Professor Stephen Byers, Ph.D. and Salimuddin Shah, Ph.D. (leaders of this particular study), they found a way to separate the two functions (of Vitamin D) at the molecular level, and this raises the possibility that vitamin D can be chemically modified into a drug that will only have anticancer effects.

Read more at Georgetown U News.