What is it with cows lately?

Summerangel recently posted a study linking the bovine leukemia virus to breast cancer in humans:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/09/15091...

Then, last night, I was rearching survivin, an anti-death protein found at high levels in trastuzumab-resistant cancer cells. I was wondering if there was anything that could reduce survivin and possibly reverse resistance, and I found this:

"Iron-free and iron-saturated bovine lactoferrin inhibit survivin expression and differentially modulate apoptosis in breast cancer."

"Apo-bLf (iron-free lactoferrin) induced significantly greater cytotoxicity and reduction in cell proliferation in both cancer cells showing a time and dose dependent effect. Importantly, no cytotoxicity was detected in normal MCF-10-2A cells. Both forms of bLf significantly reduced cell invasion in cancer cells. Key apoptotic molecules including p53, Bcl-2 family proteins, IAP members and their inhibitors were significantly modulated by both forms of bLf, though differentially in each cell line. Most interestingly, both Apo-bLf and Fe-bLf completely inhibited the expression of survivin protein (key IAP), after 48 h at 30 and 40 nM in cancer cells".

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25998617 (Gibbons, 2015)

And then I found another study by the same researchers, in which they showed that a diet of bovine lactoferrin nanocapsules kept mice injected with triple neg. breast cancer cells from developing tumors, twice, and even in a group of mice where the special diet was stopped at the time of the second injection of cancer cells.

"Oral administration of iron-saturated bovine lactoferrin-loaded ceramic nanocapsules for breast cancer therapy and influence on iron and calcium metabolism"

"We found that Fe-bLf-NCs effectively (P≤0.05) decreased the tumor size (4.8-fold) compared to the void NCs diet and prevented tumor recurrence when compared to intraperitoneal injection of Taxol and Doxorubicin.Taken together, orally delivered Fe-bLf NCs offer enhanced antitumor activity in breast cancer by internalizing via low-density lipoprotein receptor and transferrin receptor and regulating the micro-RNA expression.These NCs also restored the body iron and calcium levels and increased the hematologic counts."

(Mahidhara, 2015)

(So, I guess cows aren't all bad!)