Credit score: Molecular Most cancers (2025). DOI: 10.1186/s12943-025-02451-2
A world analysis staff led by the Medical College of Vienna has demonstrated for the primary time that thyroid hormone performs a key function within the improvement and development of prostate most cancers. By blocking a particular thyroid hormone receptor, most cancers development was inhibited in each animal fashions and tumor cell cultures.
The research outcomes, revealed in Molecular Most cancers, thus present a brand new strategy for the remedy of prostate tumors, particularly in a part the place present strategies fail.
The analysis staff, led by Olaf Merkel, Brigitte Hantusch and Lukas Kenner (all from the Medical Division of Pathology at MedUni Vienna) and first writer Aleksandra Fesiuk (Division of Biomedical Imaging and Picture-guided Remedy at MedUni Vienna), targeted on the function of the thyroid hormone receptor TRβ (thyroid hormone receptor beta) in tumor improvement.
In laboratory experiments, activation of the thyroid hormone triiodothyronine (T3) led to a pointy enhance in prostate most cancers cells. Nonetheless, when TRβ was inhibited with NH-3, an energetic substance presently used solely in analysis for the focused blocking of TRβ, the expansion of most cancers cells decreased considerably.
This impact was confirmed in animal fashions: tumors handled with NH-3 remained smaller or developed considerably extra slowly. NH-3 proved significantly efficient in fashions of so-called castration-resistant prostate most cancers—a type that continues to develop regardless of hormone deprivation remedy and is presently tough to deal with. Blocking TRβ additionally led to a lack of the androgen receptor sign, which is often activated by male intercourse hormones and performs a central function within the development of the illness.
Information from affected person cohorts assist these findings: tissue samples confirmed elevated ranges of TRβ in prostate tumors in comparison with wholesome tissue. Moreover, genetic analyses present that mutations in lots of prostate most cancers sufferers alter thyroid hormone signaling pathways.
Prostate most cancers is the most typical most cancers amongst males in Austria. In its early levels, the illness is often handled with hormone deprivation therapies that scale back the affect of testosterone. Nonetheless, most sufferers develop resistance to those therapies.
Efficient remedy choices are presently restricted at this stage. The newest findings have recognized a beforehand unknown mechanism that opens up new views.
“Our results suggest that TRβ is not only a driver of tumor growth, but could also serve as a potential target for new drugs,” says research chief Kenner. The research discovered that combining NH-3 with established androgen receptor inhibitors was significantly attention-grabbing, because it confirmed elevated efficacy in preclinical experiments.
Extra info:
Aleksandra Fesiuk et al, Thyroid hormone receptor beta signaling is a targetable driver of prostate most cancers development, Molecular Most cancers (2025). DOI: 10.1186/s12943-025-02451-2
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Blocking thyroid hormone receptor provides new strategy to prostate most cancers remedy (2025, October 21)
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