BAR TODAY || Official Quarterly Publication of the Bureau of Agricultural Research

Drink buffalo milk and fight tumors
by Likha C. Cuevas

July-September 2003
Volume 5 No. 3

Philippine carabao

Mom says, drink your milk to be stronger and healthier. Well, mom is always right. Not only does milk contain the essential nutrients needed for growing up but it also has components that can help fight bacterial and viral infections and even prevent tumor growth.

Human milk, for example, provides various types and classes of bioactive compounds like enzymes, hormones, and growth nutrients. Many studies that investigated the health benefits of human milk led to the discovery of multimeric alpha-lactalbumin (MAL). MAL was discovered to exhibit broad yet selective cytotoxic (cell-killing) activities, wherein MAL induces apoptosis in a variety of transformed cells. Apoptosis is a type of cell death in which the cell uses specialized cellular machinery to kill itself. It is a cell suicide mechanism that enables metazoans like mammals (any animal of the subkingdom Metazoa; all animals except protozoans and sponges) to control cell number and eliminate cells that threaten the animal's survival. Examples of potentially dangerous cells inside the body are self-reactive lymphocytes, cells infected by viruses, and tumor cells.

In short, milk may have a function as an anti-tumor agent.

Custer C. Deocaris of the Cancer Research and Radiation Biology Laboratory of the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, Richmond L. Gregorio and Yvette Maureen Y. Chua of the Department of Biochemistry, University of Sto. Tomas (UST) determined the presence of selective cytotoxicity of human MAL (HuMAL) in buffalo milk (Philippine carabao milk).

Philippine carabao (Bubalus bubalis L.) milk contains higher fat (10.4%) and protein (5.9%) compared to Holstein cow's milk (3.5% and 3.1%, respectively), which makes it a good source of nutrients. One component of milk protein is the alpha lactalbumin, "an important protein in the synthesis of lactose and its presence is central to the process of milk synthesis," the researchers said.

The researchers found that Philippine carabao's milk, "induces activity via apoptosis in two cancer cell lines, A549 lung adenocarcinoma and SkBr3 breast carcinoma." The cytotoxic activity of buffalo alpha lactalbumin (BAL) isolated in this study is shown through programmed cell death and the analysis suggests that BAL is the apoptosis-inducing component of milk. The amino acid (a type of molecule that forms the basic building block of proteins) sequence of BAL is similar to HuMAL with one amino acid difference. The results suggest that the mechanisms that BAL initiates apoptosis are the same with HuMAL. The initiation of apoptosis is not yet clear but future studies on BAL could lead to the three mechanisms that MAL engages in switching on the programmed cell death pathway.

Just like HuMAL, this study on BAL opens a new avenue in drug design against a variety of malignancies, the researchers said. Future studies, they suggested, should be done to unravel the processes involved in the tumor-fighting mechanism of BAL. Who knows, there may be a cancer-preventing powdered milk developed in the future. For the meantime, drinking carabao's milk is a step to cancer prevention.

References: Deocaris, C.C.1, Gregorio, R.L.2,and Chua, Y.M.Y2. Tumor Cell Death-inducing Protein from Buffalo Milk. 1Cancer Research and Radiation Biology Laboratory, Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI). Tel. 929-6011 to 19 local 238. 2Department of Biochemistry, University of Sto. Tomas.
Kohler C et. Al. A Folding Variant of Human Alpha-lactalbumin Induces Mitochondrial Permeability Transition in Isolated Mitochondria. Eur. J. Biochem. 2001 Jan;268(1):186-91.www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Sabharwal, H.K. Role of Multimeric Alpha Lactalbumin in the Prevention and Treatment of Drug Resistant Pediatric Infections. www.ifcp.us
Apoptosis, cytotoxic, amino acids. www.hyperdictionary.com