A highly significant correlation between reduced incidence of breast cancer in Asian countries and consumption of soy suggests that specific components in soy may have anticarcinogen activity. The soy ingredients genistein and daidzein have been found to inhibit induced breast tumors in animal and cell culture models. These isoflavones are known to be both agonists and antagonists of estrogen activity but only genistein is also a potent inhibitor of tyrosine kinases which are the primary intracellular signalling mechanisms associated with the regulation of cell proliferation.

Genistein promotes cell proliferation in breast cancer cells at low concentrations in its function as estrogen agonist but inhibits cell proliferation at high concentrations (30 μM). In order to investigate the underlying mechanisms by which high concentration of genistein inhibit cell proliferation we treated MCF-7 cells with increasing concentrations of genistein and analyzed cells by immunofluorescence and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).