Fungus Shows Promise as Cancer Treatment

Medical scientists have placed another piece in what  is the jigsaw puzzle of prostate cancer. A natural compound has been shown to be effective in treating advanced cases of the disease.

The stem cells in some advanced prostate cancers don't respond to either chemotherapy or hormone therapy. That's why it's so important to find ways to treat these stem cells that can cause cancer grow and spread. A new study has uncovered some promising findings.

New therapy being developed to treat advanced prostate cancer.

Senior researcher Rebecka Hellsten and Professor Anders Bjartell at the Faculty of Medicine's division for Urological Cancer Research, Skåne University Hospital in Malmö, discovered that a protein called STAT3 is active in cancer stem cell-like cells.

In previous work, these researchers found the natural compound galiellalactone - that's derived from the fungus Galiella rufa - affects the STAT3 protein and stops the growth of prostate cancer.

These findings, which are published in the scientific online journal PLoS ONE, may lead to the development of new drugs using galiellalactone that specifically target the STAT3 to prevent prostate cancer tumors from growing and spreading.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer found in men.