It has been recently reported by Daily Mail newspaper that broccoli could help in stopping the breast cancer to spreading. It mentioned that a chemical that was found in the green superfood was sulforaphane, which attacked the cells that increase the growth of tumors.

It was seen from the laboratory research that sulforaphane was naturally found in broccoli and had anti-cancer properties. In the experiment on mice it was noticed that sulforaphane barred the growth of breast cancer stem cells.

Further testing of the anti-cancer properties of sulphoraphane would be done in future and its capability to target the cancer stem cell population.

It has been noted that chemotherapy and radiotherapy system were not able to do this. However, it cannot be assumed at the moment that eating broccoli and applying the sulforaphane compound directly to cancer cells showed the same results. More research was needed to be done on this in future.

It was seen that this research was done by Yanyan Li and colleagues from the University of Michigan and The Ohio State University, whereas the University of Michigan Cancer Center Research Grant, and the University of Michigan Cancer Center Core Grant funded this study.

In the medical journal of Clinical Cancer Research the study was published.