This study was done at Emory University and the lead author was Dr. Donald Stein, who pioneered the use of progesterone in treating brain injuries. It shows that high doses of progesterone inhibited the growth of neuroblastoma tumors in mice without killing healthy cells. Neuroblastoma is a cancer that develops from nerve tissue, and is the most common cancer in small children.
Dr Stein and his team were working on the problem of how to make progesterone more effective when they discovered that while progesterone was protecting healthy neurons from stress effects it also killed cells in a cancer line. When they investigated this effect in mice, they found that over eight days progesterone cut tumor growth by 50 percent, without toxicity.
They explain that, “High-dose P4 [progesterone] inhibited tumor growth by suppressing cell proliferation and inducing apoptosis…” Apoptosis is programmed cell death, and a hallmark of cancer cells is that they don’t die when they’re supposed to. Progesterone also signals cells to differentiate, or develop into specific types of cells. Another hallmark of cancer cells is that they don’t differentiate.
The Emory team recently published research showing that a combination of progesterone and vitamin D works better to protect the brain than progesterone alone and are also investigating whether progesterone can help prevent the growth of glioblastomas and astrocytoma, both brain cancers.