Chemoprevention of rat mammary carcinogenesis: Exceptional activity of dietary dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)

Abstract

A major determinant of progress in human breast cancer prevention is the identification of agents with significant anticarcinogenic activity and acceptable levels of toxicity in experimental animals. Over the past 20 years, more than 50 experimental regimens have been shown to have significant chemopreventive activity in the rat mammary gland. The most effective approaches to mammary cancer chemoprevention in rats involve surgical endocrine ablations such as bilateral ovariectomy. However, prophylactic surgical ablations are unlikely to be acceptable to the majority of the general public. All chemicals evaluated to date are less effective, and none has been shown to reduce mammary cancer incidence to zero. As a result, efforts continue to identify chemical agents whose protective activity is comparable to that of endocrine ablation. DHEA is an adrenal steroid with chemopreventive activity in several animal models for human cancer. In the present studies, the chemopreventive efficacy of DHEA was evaluated in rats exposed to the mammary gland carcinogen, N-methyl-N-nitrosourea (MNU). Groups of 20 female Sprague-Dawley rats were fed an AIN-76A diet supplemented with 0, 400, or 800 mg DHEA per kg diet; one week later, all rats received a single i.p. injection of 35 mg MNU per kg body weight. Animals were palpated weekly to monitor mammary tumor development, and all mammary tumors were histologically confirmed. When administered at 800 mg/kg diet, DHEA reduced mammary cancer incidence in controls from 95% to 15%; carcinoma multiplicity in rats receiving 800 mg DHEA per kg diet was reduced by more than 85% from control levels. In a separate study, the 400 mg/kg diet dose of DHEA reduced the incidence of mammary cancer to 5% from 80% found in controls fed the basal diet. Reductions in mammary cancer incidence and multiplicity associated with DHEA administration were accompanied by large increases in cancer latency. Evaluation of mammary gland wholemounts from animals fed DHEA demonstrated a massive induction of lobuloalveolar differentiation. These results indicate the dietary supplementation with non-toxic dose levels of DHEA has chemopreventive efficacy approaching that of endocrine ablation. This protection may be mediated by the induction of differentiation in the mammary gland, during which sensitive mammary parenchymal structures (terminal end buds) are stimulated to develop into structures (alveolar buds) less sensitive to carcinogenic insult.