Prostate Cancer
Among men, prostate cancer (PC) is the second most common and one of the deadliest forms of cancer. In 2002, doctors will diagnose nearly 200,000 Americans with PC, and over 30,000 are expected to die from it. These numbers are projected to increase substantially in the years ahead. Today, there is no cure for PC that has metastasized. Moreover, control of PC at this stage can be difficult.

Development of new drugs to treat terminal prostate cancer is one of Anagen's initial goals. Our approach is to utilize pharmacologically active components (and structurally related synthetic analogs) derived from green tea. These compounds are often referred to as green tea polyphenols (GTPs) or catechins and there is a growing body of scientific evidence in support of their potential effectiveness to treat PC. Of the active green tea catechins, Anagen is currently studying the effects of epigallocatechin gallate or EGCG.

Recently published data¹ support the concept that catechins may be useful agents to treat PC. In a series of elegant experiments, scientists employed a transgenic mouse model of human prostate adenocarcinoma to study the effects of a mixture of GTPs on cancer growth and metastasis. The primary study finding, namely, that GTPs inhibited tumor formation and completely blocked tumor metastasis to lymph, lungs, liver and bone, is depicted graphically below.

In addition to reducing the occurrence and spread of PC, daily ingestion of GTPs significantly increased tumor-free survival as evidenced by the fact that 50% of the mice were tumor-free at 40 weeks. Furthermore, GTP-treated mice exhibited a 70% increase in survival over control mice.

Yet another notable finding in transgenic mice was that GTPs stimulated programmed death of PC cells (a process known as apoptosis). This may be important because it represents another way to kill PC cells - one that does not rely on PC cells being in an active phase of growth or dependent upon androgen stimulation. In fact, other animal studies have also shown that EGCG can be effective in suppressing PC that is androgen-independent suggesting that EGCG may be effective in treating advanced prostate cancer.

Screening of compounds related to EGCG for similar activity against PC is an additional part of Anagen's R&D activities.