Solidago Virgaurea for Prostate Cancer Therapy

摘要

Prostate cancer is one of the most resistant tumors to chemotherapy among all adenocarcinomas, and there is virtually no effective therapeutic regimen available for this cancer. Hormonal treatment is the most effective therapy in advanced cancer, however, almost all the patients who undergo hormonal therapy inevitably develop hormone-resistant tumors. Therefore, developing a better therapeutic agent by targeting a specific gene or pathway with well-defined clinical rationale is needed. We chose a target called Fatty acid synthase (FAS) because we found that FAS is strongly expressed in prostate cancer cells but not in normal cells and that inhibiting the FAS expression causes specific tumor cell death. In this project, we plan to test the hypothesis that an active component of Solidago virgaurea specifically inhibits the FAS activity and induces apoptosis in prostate tumor cells. Our specific aims are (i) to elucidate the molecular mechanism of growth inhibitory effect of S. virgaurea by defining the signal pathway and factors responsible for apoptosis, and (ii) to examine the effect of the active component of Solidago virgaurea on tumorigenesis in an animal model.