Combination Of Viagra And Anti-Cancer Drug Shrinks Tumors In Vivo, Researchers Discove
Posted Sep 28 2010 6:58pm
Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, VCU Pauley Heart Center and VCU Massey Cancer Center researchers have shown that the impotence drug Viagra, in combination with doxorubicin, a powerful anti-cancer drug, enhances its anti-tumor efficacy in prostate cancer while alleviating the damage to the heart at the same time.
For more than four decades the chemotherapeutic agent doxorubicin has been used to treat a number of human cancers, including that of the prostate. Despite doxorubicin’s clinical efficacy for cancer treatment, its use is associated with irreversible heart damage, often presenting several years after treatment stops. Researchers have been working over the past 15 years to find an optimal therapeutic intervention for protecting the heart against the cytotoxicity associated with doxorubicin.
In the study published online the week of Sept. 27 in the Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers using a variety of powerful in vitro and in vivo approaches, have shown that a combination of Viagra, generically known as sildenafil, and doxorubcin significantly enhances the generation of reactive oxygen species that trigger cell death, or apoptosis, in prostate cancer cells. They also observed that the combination did not harm the normal, healthy prostate epithelial cells.
Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, VCU Pauley Heart Center and VCU Massey Cancer Center researchers have shown that the impotence drug Viagra, in combination with doxorubicin, a powerful anti-cancer drug, enhances its anti-tumor efficacy in prostate cancer while alleviating the damage to the heart at the same time.
For more than four decades the chemotherapeutic agent doxorubicin has been used to treat a number of human cancers, including that of the prostate. Despite doxorubicin’s clinical efficacy for cancer treatment, its use is associated with irreversible heart damage, often presenting several years after treatment stops. Researchers have been working over the past 15 years to find an optimal therapeutic intervention for protecting the heart against the cytotoxicity associated with doxorubicin.
In the study published online the week of Sept. 27 in the Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers using a variety of powerful in vitro and in vivo approaches, have shown that a combination of Viagra, generically known as sildenafil, and doxorubcin significantly enhances the generation of reactive oxygen species that trigger cell death, or apoptosis, in prostate cancer cells. They also observed that the combination did not harm the normal, healthy prostate epithelial cells.