Calcium fructoborate: plant-based dietary boron as potential medicine for cancer therapy.

It was predicted that more B-containing molecules will be discovered that will prove useful in applications involving cell surface signaling, but insufficient progress was made in this general direction. The main objective of this review is to reveal other promising research directions for B-chemoprevention and chemotherapy using Calcium Fructoborate (CF). Targets include breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer and cervical cancer. CF has been identified as Ca ( (C6H10O6)2B)2o4H2O and is a natural product from plants (can be produced by chemical synthesis as well), and is efficient in the prevention and treatments (as adjuvant) of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. CF showed inhibitory effects on MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells as well, and enters the cell (most likely) by a co-transport mechanism via a sugar transporter. Inside cells CF acts as an antioxidant and induces the overexpression of apoptosis-related proteins and eventually apoptosis.