Berberine

[Srbergman]

Does berberine help the effectiveness of radiation therapy? I've heard that it does but I would like some opinions of all the experts on this forum.

[timotur]

There's some papers on it... I used it during IMRT and had good results (see profile).

Background: The radiation resistance of prostate cancer remains the primary obstacle to improve patient survival.This study aimed to investigate the effects of berberine, a commonly used natural product, on the radiosensitivityof prostate cancer.

Methods: Prostate cancer cell line LNCaP and DU-145 were subjected to hypoxia and/or ionizing radiation (IR), inthe presence or absence of berberine treatment. Cell growth and colony formation, and apoptosis were evaluated.Moreover, LNCaP cells were xenografted into nude mice and subjected to IR and/or berberine treatment. The expression of HIF-1αand VEGF in prostate cancer cells and xenografts was detected by Western blot analysis.

Results: Berberine increased radiosensitivity of prostate cancer cells and xenografts in a dose dependent manner,and this was correlated with the inhibition of HIF-1αand VEGF expression.

Conclusions: Berberine may inhibit the expression of HIF-1αand VEGF and thus confer radiosensitivity on prostaticcancer cells. Berberine has potential application as an adjuvant in radiotherapy of prostatic cancer.Virtual Slides: The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: diagnosticpathology.diagnom... Berberine, Radiosensitivity,

Prostate cancer, HIF-1αBackgroundProstate cancer (PCa) is the most common malignancyin men and the second leading cause of death from can-cer. Asian prostate cancer patients had better survivalbut the incidence rate of PCa has been increasing rapidlyin recent years [1]. Currently, radiation therapy is themain treatment for PCa and provides excellent localcontrol and increased overall survival for PCa patients[2]. However, some PCa patients exhibit radiation resist-ance and develop metastatic disease in less than 5 years[3]. Thus it is an important issue to reduce radiation re-sistance and increase radiosensitivity of PCa.Hypoxia is a common feature of malignant tumors andmakes solid tumors resistant to ionizing radiation (IR) [4].Hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) is one of the main reg-ulators of cell response to hypoxia. HIF-1αis a subunit ofHIF-1 and regulates the expression of a variety of down-stream target genes, including vascular endothelial growthfactor (VEGF), and could confer resistance to radiationtherapy and chemotherapy [5,6].Berberine is a quaternary ammonium salt from theprotoberberine group of isoquinoline alkaloids. A num-ber of studies have shown that berberine has anti-tumoractivity for a variety of cancers. However, the effects ofberberine on PCa have not been reported. In this study,we showed that berberine could inhibit HIF-1αexpression*

[pjoshea13]

This is 4 years old. See [2e]:

healthunlocked.com/advanced...

-Patrick