Overcoming drug resistance in hormone-and drug-refractory prostate cancer cell line, PC-3 by docetaxel and gossypol combination

PubMed ID: 19288219Drug resistance is a significant challenge of daily oncology practice. Docetaxel and gossypol both have antitumoral activity in hormone-refractory prostate cancer (HRPC). Our results revealed that docetaxel and gossypol were synergistically cytotoxic and apoptotic in PC-3 cells in a dose-and time-dependent manner. We further investigated the expression profiles of genes involved in drug resistance and metabolism with a Human Cancer Drug Resistance and Metabolism PCR Array® (SuperArray). Six of the 84 genes that are known to regulate drug resistance, metabolism, cell cycle, DNA repair and oncogenesis were downregulated C3-fold change by the combination treatment. These results may be important in devising mechanism-based and targeted therapeutic strategies for prostate cancer, especially in devising combination therapy for drug resistant prostate cancers. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009