Vitamin E can be effective inhibitor.

• Position: Cancer Prevention - Brief article

An elusive anti-cancer property of vitamin E that long has been presumed to exist--but difficult to find--has been identified by researchers. Many animal studies have suggested that vitamin E could prevent cancer, but human clinical trials following up on those findings have not shown the same benefits. In this new work, researchers show in prostate cancer cells that one form of vitamin E inhibits the activation of an enzyme that is essential for cancer cell survival. The loss of the enzyme, called Akt, leads to tumor cell death. The vitamin has no negative effect on normal cells.

'This is the first demonstration of a unique mechanism of how vitamin E can have some benefit in terms of cancer prevention and treatment," says lead author Ching-Shih Chen of the research published in Science Signaling.

Chen cautions that taking a typical vitamin E supplement will not offer this benefit for at least two reasons: the...