Antibiotic Reduces Prostate Cancer Cells Growth

This is a good news for men worldwide – Finnish researchers have discovered a compound that prevents the growth of prostate cancer cells, the second most common cause of cancer death in men, after lung cancer.

A team of researchers from VTT Technical Research Center of Finland and the University of Turku have proved that an antibiotic called "monensin" can successfully prevent the growth of prostate cancer cells.

Prostate cancer kills, according to estimations, nearly 300,000 men every year, AlphaGalileo reports.

Monensin is used in the meat and dairy industry, and the evidence of its beneficial effects was found thanks to a project that assessed the effects of almost 5,000 drugs and micromolecules on the growth of prostate cancer cells.

The study involved most of the drugs that can be found on the market today, and recently, medical companies seem very interested in this kind of projects, in an attempt to find new indications for drugs that already exist.

The reason for this is that the dosage and adverse effects of existent drugs, as well as their combined effects with other drugs are already known, which can only lead to serious cost savings.

The scientists have identified the compounds which, in small amounts, can prevent the growth of prostate cancer cells without causing any serious effects on the growth of normal prostate epithelial cells – disulfiram (Antabus), thiram, tricostatin A and monensin.

More thorough studies concluded that monensin managed to kill prostate cancer cells by reducing the testosterone receptor, by increasing the production of reactive oxygen species and triggering DNA damage.

Also, when combining monensin with anti-androgens (the drugs which suppress the effects of androgens) prostate cancer cells growth was prevented.

Senior Research Scientist Kristiina Iljin from VTT and Research Scientist Kirsi Ketola from the University of Turku, said that “these research findings give rise to a potential new use for the monensin.

“The results also demonstrate that the effects of anti-androgens in suppressing the growth of cancer cells can be enhanced by using drugs inducing production of reactive oxygen species.”

The results concerning the effects of drugs and micromolecules were published in the Clinical Cancer Research journal in 2009, and the effects of monensin on preventing the growth of prostate cancer were published in the Molecular Cancer Therapeutics journal in December 2010.