The effect of the type of dietary protein on the development of ovarian cancer

// Ahmed A.A. Taha 1, 2 , Masafumi Koshiyama 1, 3 , Noriomi Matsumura 1 , Kaoru Abiko 1 , Ken Yamaguchi 1 , Jyunzo Hamanishi 1 , Tsukasa Baba 1 , Budiman Kharma 1 , Ibrahim Hassanin Mohamed 2 , Magdy Mohamed Ameen 2 , Salah Ali Ismail 2 , Ikuo Konishi 1 and Masaki Mandai 1 1 Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan 2 Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Sohag Faculty of Medicine Sohag University, Sohag, Egypt 3 Department of Women’s Health, Graduate School of Human Nursing, The University of Shiga Prefecture, Shiga, Japan Correspondence to: Masafumi Koshiyama, email: koshiya@kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp Keywords: plant protein diet; animal protein diet; cisplatin; IGF-1; p-4EBP1 Received: May 05, 2017     Accepted: April 08, 2018     Published: May 08, 2018 ABSTRACT We evaluated whether different dietary protein qualities (isocaloric diets involving animal (casein) or plant protein (soy protein) could inhibit the ovarian cancer growth in mice and improve their prognosis and whether chemotherapy had different tumor reducing effects on these mice. In the mice of the 20% plant protein group, the ovarian cancer growth at 5 weeks after tumor implantation was clearly reduced in comparison to the mice in the 20% animal protein group (p< 0.001). The serum levels of insulin and IGF-1 levels were both lower in the mice of the 20% plant protein group than in the mice of the 20% animal protein group (p<0.001 and p<0.01, respectively). Immunohistochemistry revealed that the level of eukaryotic initiation factor 4E-binding protein 1 (p-4EBP1) activity—one of the major downstream effectors of the mTOR pathway —of the plant protein group was significantly weaker than that of the animal protein group (p<0.001). The prognosis of the 20% plant protein group was better than that of the 20% animal protein group (log-rank test, p=0.0062). The ovarian cancer growth in the 20% plant protein plus cisplatin treatment group was not significantly reduced in comparison to the 20% animal protein plus cisplatin treatment group. Our findings suggest that a diet high in plant protein reduces the growth of human ovarian cancer cells in mice compared to a diet high in animal protein, —possibly through the lack of activation of the IGF/Akt/mTOR pathway, and leads to a better prognosis with or without cisplatin treatment.