More news from the AACR Annual Meeting
Cruciferous vegetables, we all know them and some of us love them. What we know is that they need to form a part of the standard prostate cancer diet, but some early research shows that a substance found in the them can make prostate cancer cells even more sensitive to taxane therapy with docetaxel (Taxotere), the one approved treatment for castrate resistant prostate cancer.
Assistant professor of pharmacology and clinical biology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Dong Xiao, PhD, claims that phenethyl isothiocyanate, a constituent of edible cruciferous vegetables such as watercress, broccoli, bok choy, and cauliflower, suppresses the growth of cancer cells both in culture and in experimental animals.
Xiao and colleagues demonstrated that combining phenethyl isothiocyanate with docetaxel increased apoptosis (the process of programmed cell death) in androgen-independent human prostate cancer cell lines PC-3 and DU145.
According to Xiao, “The combination treatment with phenethyl isothiocyanate and docetaxel inhibits the tumor growth in PC-3 xenografts, but the combination does not produce any apparent adverse effects on laboratory mice.”
Using Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP Nick End Labeling (TUNEL), researchers observed more than a doubling of apoptotic bodies when the combination treatment was administered to the cells. About 40 apoptotic bodies per high-powered