Abstract
Prostate carcinoma causes a great number of deaths every year; therefore, there is an urgent need to find new drug candidates to treat advanced prostate cancer. Isobavachalcone (IBC) is the chalcone composition of Psoralea corylifolia Linn used in traditional Chinese medicine. Although IBC demonstrates potent anticancer efficacy in numerous types of human cancer cells, the cellular targets of IBC have not been fully defined. In our study, we found that IBC may induce reactive oxygen species- (ROS-) mediated apoptosis via interaction with a selenocysteine (Sec) containing the antioxidant enzyme thioredoxin reductase 1 (TrxR1), and induce lethal endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress by inhibiting TrxR1 activity and increasing ROS levels in human prostate cancer PC-3 cells. Furthermore, we also observed that knocking down TrxR1 would sensitized cancer cells to IBC treatment. Our study provides evidence for the anticancer mechanism of IBC with TrxR1 as a potential target.
Highlights
Prostate cancer leads to the second greatest number of cancer-related deaths following lung cancer
PC-3 cells were cultured with 0–70 μM IBC for 24, 48, or 72 h, followed by analysis with methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) assay
The results showed that IBC can time- and concentrationdependently inhibit the proliferation of PC-3 cells (Figure 1)
Summary
Prostate cancer leads to the second greatest number of cancer-related deaths following lung cancer. It is the most frequent cancer diagnosis in men over 60 years of age and has a high incidence rate in younger men as well [1, 2]. It is urgent to accelerate the development of potential therapeutic agents to treat hormone refractory prostate cancers. These tumors often become highly resistant to conventionally used cytotoxic agents. There is an urgent search for natural compounds with anticancer activities to treat prostate cancer
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