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Garlic-Derived S-allylmercaptocysteine Is a Novel In vivo Antimetastatic Agent for Androgen-Independent Prostate Cancer

Authors' Affiliation: Cancer Biology Group, Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Requests for reprints: Xianghong Wang, Department of Anatomy, The University of Hong Kong, 1/F, Faculty of Medicine Building, 21 Sassoon Road, Hong Kong. Phone: 852-2819-2867; Fax: 852-2817-0857; E-mail: xhwang{at}hkucc.hku.hk.

Purpose: There is epidemiologic evidence that high garlic consumption decreases the incidence of prostate cancer, and compounds isolated from garlic have been shown to have cancer-preventive and tumor-suppressive effects. Recent in vitro studies in our laboratory have shown that garlic-derived organosulfur compound S-allylmercaptocysteine suppresses invasion and cell motility of androgen-independent prostate cancer cells via the up-regulation of cell-adhesion molecule E-cadherin. S-allylmercaptocysteine is therefore a potential antimetastatic drug with broad clinical applications that we tested in vivo for the first time in this study.

Experimental Design: We used a newly established fluorescent orthotopic androgen-independent prostate cancer mouse model to assess the ability of S-allylmercaptocysteine to inhibit tumor growth and dissemination.

Results: We showed that oral S-allylmercaptocysteine not only inhibited the growth of primary tumors by up to 71% (P < 0.001) but also reduced the number of lung and adrenal metastases by as much as 85.5% (P = 0.001) without causing notable toxicity. This metastatic suppression was accompanied by a 91% reduction of viable circulating tumor cells (P = 0.041), suggesting that S-allylmercaptocysteine prevents dissemination by decreasing tumor cell intravasation.

Conclusions: Our results provide in vivo evidence supporting the potential use of S-allylmercaptocysteine as an E-cadherin up-regulating antimetastatic agent for the treatment of androgen-independent prostate cancer. This is the first report of the in vivo antimetastatic properties of garlic, which may also apply to other cancer types.

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