Fitocannabinoids: a complementary therapeutic option for breast cancer

Abstract

Breast cancer, (mainly, the known as adenocarcinoma), caused approximately 546,000 deaths worldwide (2016). In Colombia, breast cancer was the leading cause of illness and death among women and about 12.9% of all deaths caused by cancers in the country. Even though there are several treatments for the control of the disease, chemotherapy remains as the most widely used treatment today, and one of the most used is Cisplatin, which implies certain complications, mainly resistance to chemotherapy, situation that has progressively led more patients diagnosed with cancer to use allopathic treatments, as well as the use of Complementary and alternative medicine -CAM-. Here, we want to emphasize that one of the most widely used and best accepted alternative therapies for cancer is the use of phytocannabinoids from the Cannabis sativa plant, whose legalization has been accepted mostly for therapeutic and medicinal purposes in several countries, and it’s presented as an alternative to treatment thanks to the great increase in research in recent years, due to the discovery of the “endocannabinoid system” (cannabinoid receptors 1 and 2 -CB1 and CB2-), which regulates proapoptotic and antiproliferative effects in several types of cancers. It has been suggested that the tumor microenvironment could overexpress cannabinoid receptors and therefore, the therapeutic use of phytocannabinoids for the treatment of breast cancer has a potential for medical use, allowing to improve the quality of life and survival of patients suffering from this disease.