Selenium as therapy for prostate cancer

Selenium may offer an intervention strategy for the treatment of prostate cancer according to results of a study from the laboratory of Allen Gao, PhD, which will be presented by Yan Hu, PhD, Departments of Medicine and Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) at the 2007 centennial meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), April 14-18, in Los Angeles, CA.

Selenium, an effective chemopreventive agent for prostate cancer, was found to down-regulate interleukin-6 (IL-6), a cytokine that induces the progression of the spread of androgen-independent prostate cancer cells. Most prostate cancer patients respond initially to anti-androgen therapy. However, virtually all patients relapse due to the growth of androgen-independent tumor cells promoted by the overexpression of IL-6. Therefore, down-regulation of this cytokine by selenium may represent an intervention strategy in prostate cancer therapy.

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