Hemavathy Subramaiam¹*, Wan-Loy Chu², Ammu Kutty Radhakrishnan³, Srikumar Chakravarthi⁴, Kanga Rani Selvaduray⁵ and Yih-Yih Kok⁶

¹School of Medicine, International Medical University, Malaysia
²School of Postgraduate Studies, International Medical University, Malaysia
³Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia, Malaysia
⁴SEGi University, Jalan Teknologi, Taman Sains Selangor, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
⁵Product Development and Advisory Services Division, Malaysia
⁶School of Health Sciences, International Medical University, Malaysia

*Corresponding Author: Hemavathy Subramaiam, School of Medicine, International Medical University, Malaysia.

Received: August 10, 2023; Published: September 19, 2023

Abstract

Spirulina (= Arthrospira) platensis has been reported to have several health-enhancing activities. To date, the anticancer and immunomodulatory effects of Spirulina platensis against breast cancer (BC) in an experimental model have not been fully explored. The aim of this study was to assess the anticancer and immunomodulatory effects of Spirulina (= Arthrospira) platensis against BC in a syngeneic mouse model of BC using two approaches (1) simultaneous treatment and (2) early treatment models. The simultaneous treatment model evaluated the effect of feeding Spirulina at the time of tumor induction to investigate if this can inhibit tumor growth and metastasis. The aim of the early treatment model was to study if feeding the mice with Spirulina daily for two weeks prior to tumor induction can prevent the onset, growth and spread of the BC. In both models, the total duration of Spirulina supplementation was 28 days. There were no differences in body weight (p > 0.05) and tumor volume (p > 0.05) between the simultaneous and early treatments. However, a marked increase (p < 0.05) in the T-regulatory (Treg) population was observed in mice from the simultaneous treatment groups compared to control animals. The findings suggest that Spirulina feeding may induce an immunosuppressive environment in the tumor-induced animal, which may work through increasing their Treg populations, thereby suppressing the host’s immune response to the tumor.

 Keywords: Breast Cancer; Spirulina, Immunomodulatory; T-regulatory (Treg) Cells; Metastasis

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Citation

Citation: Hemavathy Subramaiam., et al. “Supplementation of Spirulina (= Arthrospira) Platensis Induces Immunosuppression through Increasing T-regulatory Cells in a Syngeneic Mouse Model of Breast Cancer" Acta Scientific Cancer Biology 7.8 (2023): 25-36.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2023 Hemavathy Subramaiam., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.