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"PhIP: The Three Strikes Breast Carcinogen"
As we've seen, the cooked meat carcinogen PhIP can cause DNA mutations that may initiate a tumor, may then promote the growth of the cancer
due to its potent estrogenic activity. And the third strike is that PhIP may then promote the invasiveness of breast cancer cells.
The way breast tumors kill is by metastasis. It's got to invade surrounding tissues and organs.
The way you test invasiveness is you put cancer cells into what's called an invasion chamber.
Cancer cells go in the top, on one side of a membrane with tiny pores - these little gray circles. This is the underside of the filter, showing no invasion.
But add some estrogen and you can see a few cancer cells peeking through. Add some PhIP and they really start going on the move.
More breast cancer cell invasion-promoting than straight estrogen! They conclude that 'in addition to its well characterized genotoxic potential,'
(DNA mutation-causing potential) 'PhIP is potently estrogenic, is capable of powerful hormonal activity, and is able to potently stimulate'
'breast cancer cells to invade through a membrane model.' 'This finding that PhIP is able to exert this pro-invasive appearance in breast cancer cells'
'at such low concentrations is remarkable. The genetic toxicity of the compound, coupled to its ability to enhance cell proliferation and invasion,'
'indicates that PhIP can act not only to initiate the carcinogenic process, but also to promote it.' The problem is, they say, that 'exposure to PhIP'
'is difficult to avoid because of its presence in many commonly consumed cooked meats, particularly chicken, beef and fish.'
But if you're able to somehow dodge cooked meats and don't suck on a cigarette, tailpipe, or incinerator smokestack, maybe it's not so difficult to avoid after all.