The antihelmintic drug pyrvinium pamoate targets aggressive breast cancer.

ABSTRACT: WNT signaling plays a key role in the self-renewal of tumor initiation cells (TICs). In this study, we used pyrvinium pamoate (PP), an FDA-approved antihelmintic drug that inhibits WNT signaling, to test whether pharmacologic inhibition of WNT signaling can specifically target TICs of aggressive breast cancer cells. SUM-149, an inflammatory breast cancer cell line, and SUM-159, a metaplastic basal-type breast cancer cell line, were used in these studies. We found that PP inhibited primary and secondary mammosphere formation of cancer cells at nanomolar concentrations, at least 10 times less than the dose needed to have a toxic effect on cancer cells. A comparable mammosphere formation IC50 dose to that observed in cancer cell lines was obtained using malignant pleural effusion samples from

SUBMITTER: Xu W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3754994 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature