Herbal medicine, as an important form of the Chinese traditional medicine, has a history of more that 2000 years. However, although people have been depending on them to relieve symptoms and cure diseases, the underlying biomedical mechanisms are quite little to known.

For example, the Tongshu Capsule (TSC), which is composed by eight traditional Chinese medicines: notoginseng, scandent schefflera stem and leaf, erigeron breviscapus, delavay ampelopsis roos, rhizome panacismajoris, fructus gardeniae, Paris polyphylla, and licorice, is developed by the Yi minority of Yunnan province and has long been widely used in treating mammary hyperplasia and breast cancer. Some clinical data showed that in 2006 and 2011, TSC only and TSC combined with vitamin E were applied to treat 60 and 112 patients with mammary hyperplasia, respectively. The successful rates were around 80% and 97.32%. However, where do its positive effects lie is still unclear.

To address these questions, recently, by collaborating with Yunnan Institute of Materia Medicine, Dr. CHEN Ceshi (Kunming Institute of Zoology, CAS) and his research team had conducted a study to reveal the underlying functional mechanisms of TSC.  

In this study, by assessing the effects of TSC on several different cancer cell lines, Dr. CHEN found that TSC significantly inhibited the growth of ERα-positive breast cancer cell proliferation by causing G1 cell cycle arresting; down-regulated the expressions of both ERα and the downstream target gene Cyclin D1, the pivotal protein for the process from G1 to S phase; and blocked the estrogen signaling pathway.

These findings suggest that TSC may inhibit ERα-positive breast cancer and mammary hyperplasia through suppressing ERα, making it a possible clinical treatment option. The main findings have been published on PLOS ONE (http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104261)