Teenager Proves Juniper Berries Fights Breast Cancer — a potential new home-grown anti-cancer agent?

Could juniper berries be Canada’s newest breast cancer treatment?

That’s what Rebecca Hollett of St John’s wondered after learning that an elderly woman diagnosed with untreatable breast cancer attributed her survival for more than three years to a daily cup of juniper tea.

“I set out to determine if it really was the juniper that helped cure her,” said 16-year-old Rebecca, a Grade 11 student at Holy Heart of Mary High.

To test her theory, Rebecca grew breast cancer cells in juniper berry extract, adding more extract over time and discovering that, the more juniper, the fewer living cancer cells.

To confirm she had something to help fight breast cancer, Rebecca had to determine if there was something else in the extract formulation that might have killed the cancer cells.

“I had a lot of trouble finding an appropriate juniper extract to use in my experiments,” she noted. In the end she used both the extract and alpha-pinene, the main phytochemical found in juniper to treat the cancer cells. The alpha-pinene killed cells equally well as the extract, confirming that the juniper berry was responsible for the killing the cancer cells

In Canada, breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, with more than 22,000 new diagnoses every year.

If further research shows that juniper was an effective anti-cancer agent then it would be extremely beneficial to thousands of Canadians, Rebecca says. “It would also benefit the Canadian economy because it could be exported and sold globally.”

“Imagine a local berry that could be picked by anyone that has the potential to cure thousands of people with cancer.”