Flavokavain-A: The ability to treat drug resistant lung cancer.
Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer related deaths. Standard surgery and radiotherapies have worked well, however a need for different compounds has risen. In some situations, surgery or radiotherapy is not possible, leaving only chemo as the major treatment option. Chemoresistance can comes into play in this situation. Whenever a cancer changes and adapts to evade or cope with the presence of therapeutics it is known as chemoresistance. One of the mechanisms of this resistance is known as permeability-glycoprotein (P-gp) mediated drug resistance. P-gp resistance reversal allows for the cancer to be re-sensitized to standard therapeutics. FKA downregulates P-gb expression in drug resistant cancer cells (A549/T cells), and also induces apoptosis (cellular death) in those same cells. Drugs have been created to address this issue in the past, however first and second generations of these drugs failed in clinical tests due to undesired side effects and toxicity issues. Flavokavain A was shown to have none of these toxicity issues. FKA was tested directly on liver cells and it was found it exerted no obvious hepatoxicity. FKA is suggested in this study to be a possible candidate for the treatment of drug-resistant lung cancer.
Li, J., & Lei, Z. (2019). Activity and mechanism of flavokawain A in inhibiting P-glycoprotein expression in paclitaxel resistance of lung cancer. Oncology Letters, 19(1), 379-387. doi:10.3892/ol.2019.11069
Full study is available to view. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6923923/)
Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer related deaths. Standard surgery and radiotherapies have worked well, however a need for different compounds has risen. In some situations, surgery or radiotherapy is not possible, leaving only chemo as the major treatment option. Chemoresistance can comes into play in this situation. Whenever a cancer changes and adapts to evade or cope with the presence of therapeutics it is known as chemoresistance. One of the mechanisms of this resistance is known as permeability-glycoprotein (P-gp) mediated drug resistance. P-gp resistance reversal allows for the cancer to be re-sensitized to standard therapeutics. FKA downregulates P-gb expression in drug resistant cancer cells (A549/T cells), and also induces apoptosis (cellular death) in those same cells. Drugs have been created to address this issue in the past, however first and second generations of these drugs failed in clinical tests due to undesired side effects and toxicity issues. Flavokavain A was shown to have none of these toxicity issues. FKA was tested directly on liver cells and it was found it exerted no obvious hepatoxicity. FKA is suggested in this study to be a possible candidate for the treatment of drug-resistant lung cancer.
Li, J., & Lei, Z. (2019). Activity and mechanism of flavokawain A in inhibiting P-glycoprotein expression in paclitaxel resistance of lung cancer. Oncology Letters, 19(1), 379-387. doi:10.3892/ol.2019.11069
Full study is available to view. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6923923/)