Cancer Res: two birds with one stone! New prostate cancer drugs inhibit two carcinogens at the same time

September 20, 2018 / Biovalley / according to the latest report of researchers from the University of Houston, they have developed a new method for the treatment of highly malignant and often fatal prostate cancer They have found a new drug that can inhibit two major signaling pathways in prostate cancer Dr Ruiwen Zhang, Professor Emeritus of Robert L Bobbitt in the field of drug development, and Dr Wei Wang, associate professor of pharmacy, completed the study The relevant research results were recently published in cancer research Photo source: https://pixabay.com/ "prostate cancer treatment needs new and effective safety drugs Our findings represent a major advance in cancer research " Zhang said "Most drugs can only target one target, and the compounds we found can target two genes related to cancer at the same time." This will be a new drug for prostate cancer, representing a new direction of drug development Prostate cancer is characterized by early metastasis and low response to chemotherapy Gemcitabine has general clinical benefits for patients, but it is still the main treatment drug for advanced prostate cancer Although the researchers tested a combination of gemcitabine and other drugs, there are only three currently approved by the FDA, and almost none of them can significantly prolong the survival of prostate cancer patients Matrix clearance and immunotherapy are also potential therapies for advanced prostate cancer, but the efficacy of them is not clear In this study, two oncogenes of prostate cancer are nuclear factor of activated T cells 1 (NFAT1) and mouse double minute 2 (MDM2), which is a gene regulating tumor suppressor gene p53 If the tumor suppressor gene p53 does not exist, MDM2 itself can induce cancer NFAT1 can up regulate the expression of MDM2 and further promote tumor growth "We have developed a compound we call ma242 that can remove both proteins at the same time, thereby enhancing the specificity and efficiency of killing cancer cells." Zhang said "In our molecular simulation study, ma242 is a powerful dual inhibitor." Although it's a synthetic molecule, it's based on a sponge MDM2 and NFAT1 are highly expressed in prostate cancer cells, which makes these genes become targets for prostate cancer treatment Many studies have found that down regulating MDM2 can delay tumor growth and progression Zhang said healthy people have low levels of MDM2 and NFAT1, but diet, nutrition and the environment may lead to high expression of these two genes In their studies published in the past, they found that some natural foods or products can prevent and even treat cancer, such as broccoli, soybeans, green tea and turmeric Reference: Jiang Jiang Qin et al, abstract 4863: targeting the nfat1-mdm2-mdmx network for prostate cancer therapy, cancer research (2018) Doi: 10.1158/1538-7445.am2018-4863