Extracting the Benefit of Nexrutine® for Cancer Prevention.

ABSTRACT

The current standard of care for prostate cancer includes hormone therapy, radiation therapy and radical prostatectomy, each with its own set of undesirable side effects. In this regard there is an unmet need to develop strategies that can prevent or delay the development of clinical prostate cancer. One potential area involves the use of natural compounds involving botanicals. Along these lines we have found that Nexrutine®, a dietary supplement derived from Phellodendron amurense bark extract, has prostate cancer prevention activity. The "extract" nature of this botanical, which constitutes a blend of several active protoberberine alkaloids, allows it to target several pathways deregulated in prostate cancer simultaneously. In this review, we will emphasize the prospective translational benefit of Nexrutine® as a chemopreventive agent for prostate cancer management. The potential of Nexrutine® was first identified and has subsequently been most exhaustively studied with reference to prostate cancer. Therefore the focus of this review is on the use of Nexrutine® in prostate cancer. In addition we have summarized the emerging evidence regarding the use of Nexrutine® in other tumor models to demonstrate the potential benefits of Nexrutine®.