Inhibition of human aromatase by mammalian lignans and isoflavonoid phytoestrogens

Inhibition of Akt signaling by the lignan matairesinol sensitizes prostate cancer cells to TRAIL-induced apoptosis

“…Lignans have been reported to induce downregulation of the anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 proteins (Hausott et al, 2003) and to inhibit casein kinase II and protein kinase C a (Yokoyama et al, 2003). They can act as antioxidants protecting cells from oxidative stress (Kitts et al, 1999), or as inhibitors of steroid metabolizing Lignans sensitize prostate cancer cells to TRAIL E Peuhu et al enzymes (Adlercreutz et al, 1993). Chen et al (2007) recently showed that ENL induces spontaneous apoptosis of LNCaP cells.…”

Inhibitory effect on expression of angiogenic factors by antiangiogenic agents in renal cell carcinoma

“…Although the mechanism responsible for the inhibition described above remains unclear, accumulating studies have shown that genistein has multiple antitumour functions. Those include inhibition of tyrosine kinase activity (Akiyama et al, 1987), topoisomerase II (Okura et al, 1988) and steroid metabolizing enzymes such as 17b-hydroxysteroid oxidoreductase (Mäkelä et al, 1998), P-450 aromatase (Adlercreutz et al, 1993) and 5-a reductase (Evans et al, 1995), induction of differentiation (Record et al, 1997), G2/M arrest, induction of p21 WAF1/CIP1 and apoptosis (Shao et al, 1998). With regard to angiogenesis, genistein blocks the expression of VEGF induced by hypoxia by inhibiting src tyrosine kinase in some cancer cell lines (Mukhopadhyay et al, 1995).…”

Neurobehavioral effects of dietary soy phytoestrogens

“…These biological parameters represent important elements in the structure/ function relationship of the genesis of the rat CNS perinatally and the morphometric and functional characteristics of hypothalamic brain areas postnatally [28,65,67,70]. It is known that phytoestrogens inhibit aromatase enzyme activity in peripheral endocrine tissue sites during postnatal development (in vitro) [2,3,49,54,56,86,118]. However, the effect of phytoestrogens on brain aromatase has not been previously examined until now.…”