Breastmilk Fighting Cancer?

Most of us breastfeeding moms know that breastfeeding has lot of of benefits not only to the baby, but to the mom also. The act of breastfeeding reduces the risk of both breast cancer and ovarian cancer for the mother. But does the actual breastmilk have cancer fighting powers too?
According to Science News, it does. According to the article:

Once Svanborg and her team had established that something in breast milk was killing human cancer cells in the lab, they isolated the assassin. It turned out to be the protein alpha-lactalbumin. But the compound becomes lethal only when
exposed to acid, as it is in a stomach and was in the lab. The acid unfolds the alpha lactalbumin protein into a havoc-wreaking form.
Svanborg dubbed the acidified form of the protein HAMLET, for human alpha-lactalbumin made lethal to tumors.
Cancer cells take up far more HAMLET than healthy cells do. The huge quantities of unfolded proteins destroy the cancer cells. Svanborg found that HAMLET killed 40 kinds of tumor cells in lab dishes. She has also studied the reactive compound in rats with human-cancer cells implanted in their brains.
She used an invasive cancer called glioblastoma that usually kills people in less than a year. She injected HAMLET directly into the tumors of some of the rats, while others received injections of alpha-lactalbumin that hadn't been activated by acid.
After 7 weeks, the rats getting inactive protein bore tumors seven times, on average, as large as the tumors in the HAMLET-treated rats, the researchers reported in 2004

.
Cancer runs rampant through both mine and the Knights family. My grandmother passed away two years ago after a long battle with cancer. The Knight has lost three aunts to cancer, and his grandmother just recently went into remission after treatment for a cancerous tumor in her throat. My mother is also in remission after treatment for ovarian and stomach cancer. So for us, cancer is a big concern. We do our best to stay as healthy as possible, we don't smoke, etc. But my greatest fear is that myself or my daughters will get cancer. I'm glad to know that by breastfeeding, not only am I reducing my chances of getting cancer, but also my daughters' chances. Hopefully these new findings will bring us closer to a cure.

Thanks to Angela over at Breastfeeding 1-2-3 for the heads up on this article.

Breastmilk Fighting Cancer?