Advertise With UsAdvertise on our extensive network of industry websites and newsletters.
Get the PBR newsletterSign up to our free email to get all the latest PBR
news.Researchers from the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, have said that a new type of drug could benefit men with aggressive prostate cancer that has stopped responding to treatment.
Subscribe to our email newsletter
In a study on mice, researchers found that the drugs, called Hsp90 inhibitors, were found to strip cancer cells of defences against hormone treatments.
The research indicates that Hsp90 inhibitors may be effective in prostate cancers that have become resistant to treatment and started spreading across the body.
The effect of Hsp90 inhibition was investigated on human cancer cells that produced the most common androgen receptor variant, called AR-V7.
The researchers grew the cancer cells in the lab and injected them into mice. They demonstrated that Hsp90 inhibition reduced production of AR-V7 via a new and unanticipated mechanism of action – by modifyingg the way that messenger RNA molecules carrying the code for AR-V7 are processed.
Hsp90 inhibition also decreased the levels of the normal androgen receptor, and other key prostate cancer molecules, dubbed AKT and GR.
The ICR professor of experimental cancer medicine and study co-leader Johann de Bono said: "We have demonstrated for the first time that Hsp90 inhibitors can block the production of the most common abnormal androgen receptors that cause many prostate cancers to stop responding to current treatments.
"These drugs are already in clinical trials for several types of cancer, and I am excited that our work suggests they could also benefit men with prostate cancer who have otherwise run out of treatment options."
Image: Treated prostate cancer cells. Photo: Courtesy of Professor Johann de Bono.