Calcitriol and 20(S)-protopanaxadiol(aPPD) synergistically inhibit growth and induce apoptosis in human prostate cancer cells, according to the study published in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Prostate cancer is one of the commonest cancers in men and it has seen a rising trend in the recent years. Prostate cancer usually grows slowly but sometimes it develops and spread quickly, risking people’s lives.
The study was led by MohamedBen-Eltriki, co-researcher from Department of Experimental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia in Canada design comparison experiment to explore the anticancer effect of calcitriol and aPPD synergistically.
“As the proliferation rate of prostate cancer cells was significantly lower for combination treatments compared to the cells treated with aPPD alone”, noted MohamedBen-Eltriki in the paper.
Further experiments showed that aPPD significantly upregulated Vitamin D receptor (VDR) expression, while calcitriol further enhanced the ability of aPPD to induce pro-apoptotic BAX and caspase-3 and downregulate cell division protein kinase (cdk2).
The study indicates that Calcitriol and aPPD can work together to induce apoptosis in prostate cancer cells and exert synergistic anticancer effects.