Sea squirts and a species of tree found in rainforests could boost the effectiveness of existing prostate cancer treatments, a Queensland University of Technology researcher says.
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Dr Jennifer Gunter and her team sifted through thousands of Queensland native compounds and found sea squirts, a marine invertebrate filter feeder commonly found in the Great Barrier Reef, and a rainforest tree found in tropical locations throughout the state shared a unique bond.
"They are not structurally similar to each other and we don't think they act on exactly the same molecule but they affect similar metabolic pathways and have the same effect on (prostate cancer) cells," she said.
Dr Gunter said prostate cancer cells change their metabolism to maintain their rapid rate of growth and proliferation and thrive off testosterone produced in the body.
Therapy to date has consisted primarily of restricting the production of testosterone, effectively a "chemical castration", Dr Gunter said, however this treatment is often a temporary solution.
"The tumours shrink because of their dependency on testosterone for growth and proliferation but that is temporary," she said.
"For some men, it is two years, for some men 10; it is not always permanent therapy.
"The tumour starts to be able to adapt to this low testosterone environment and re-grow despite the blood showing low levels of testosterone.
"The tumour has found ways to adjust to that low androgen environment and by doing that it kick starts what we call adaptive responses, new escape measures...to try to maximise its growth and survival."
Dr Gunter said laboratory testing has shown that is where sea squirts and rainforest tree compounds could come into play, by targeting nutrients the prostate cancer cells shift to once testosterone is absent.
"They (prostate cancer cells) have this new dependency on amino acid metabolism which we then hit, it is cutting off what they would have used as an escape mechanism," she said.
"In doing that, we have got a new appreciation for the importance of nutrient stress and amino acid stress in particular which both of these compounds are able to target.
"We didn't realise this was such a little achilles heel for this cancer cell.
"Our vision is that by combining these treatments we can extend the period of time that these men can successfully use therapy."
Dr Gunter said her team were partnering with a clinical trial centre at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital to try to refine these compounds to improve their bioactivity that could lead to clinical trials down the track.
"We don't need to go and harvest a bunch of sea squirts out of the Great Barrier Reef, we have come to understand what the structure and function of what this molecule is," she said.
Dr Gunter said there was an "incredible richness" in Queensland's biodiversity that was "relatively untapped".
"We know many current cancer therapies are isolated from plants so there is precedence for us looking and I am really excited that these both just happened to be from two of our most iconic landscapes," she said.
The compounds were sourced from a Natural Product Compound Library through a collaboration with Griffith University.
