Indole-3-Carbinol Preferentially Target ERα-Positive Breast Cancer Cells.

Indole-3-carbinol (I3C) is a natural anti-carcinogenic compound found at high concentrations in Brassica vegetables. ER-positive cell lines demonstrated the greatest sensitivity to the anti-tumor effects of I3C compared to ER-negative breast cancer cell lines. Gene expression analysis was performed to identify genes and pathways that accounted for sensitivity to I3C. Microarray analysis performed using Illumina HT-12 v4 expression arrays A total of 36 samples were analyzed with six breast cancer cell lines treated with either the vehicle control or the drug Indole-3-carbinol in triplicate. The cell lines were: MCF-7, T47D, ZR751(sensitive to the drug, apoptosis/growth arrest) and MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-157, and MDA-MB-436 (insensitive to the drug). Sensitive cell lines are of the luminal subtype and insensitive cell lines are of the basal subtype.