In 2011, researchers from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA, examined the effects of CBD on breast cancer cells.
The study was conducted in vitro, meaning either in a test tube or sample dish, rather than on an actual living organism. Nonetheless, the results were impressive:
The researchers found that CBD helped induced the programmed death of the cancer cells while causing minimal damage to healthy cells.
How exactly CBD does this, however, wasn’t clear. We know that CBD interacts with the body’s Endocannabinoid System, but the researchers noted that the effects they observed happened independently of any cannabinoid receptor activity.
They did notice, however, that CBD somehow helped organize autophagy (the destruction of damaged tissue) and apoptosis (programmed cell death).
Seeing that cancer is characterized by the unnatural growth and death of cells, the fact that CBD might help regulate cell growth and death is big news.
In 2011, the journal of Breast Cancer Research and Treatment published another similar study on CBD and its effects on breast cancer cells. This study, however, was done in vivo on mice.
The researchers noted that CBD helped to slow the proliferation of the breast cancer cells.
Furthermore, they also found that CBD helped reduce the metastasis of the tumor cells.
The authors of the study noted that this is clear evidence of CBD’s anti-tumor effects and suggested it is a promising compound that should be the study of further clinical trials.
They also noted that CBD helped reduce the expression of ID-1, a gene that plays a vital role in the development of aggressive breast cancer.
Other studies have also shown similar results on other cancers.
In 2003, for example, researchers found cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 present in both healthy and cancerous skin cells in mice.