Protease Inhibitors in Chemoprevention of Cancer: An overview

Abstract

In the search for chemopreventive agents for cancer many natural products have been identified. Among them extensive experimental studies have been made on protease inhibitors which not only occur naturally in many plant products, but have also been synthesized in the laboratory. Many of these studies reveal the fact that protease inhibitors are able to prevent carcinogenesis and tumour promotion. A review of the reports available to date suggests that protease inhibitors are potential chemopreventive agents although their biological role and mechanism of action are not very clear.

A thermostable trypsin inhibitor with antiproliferative activity from small pinto beans

“…Yet many trypsin inhibitors did not exhibit significant anti-proliferative effects, such as the trypsin inhibitors from black gram seeds 29 , green lentil seeds 30 and lily bulbs 31 . Some reports have suggested that the anti-proliferative activity from animal protease inhibitors is based on their anti-protease activity 32,33 . However, whether the same is also true of plant trypsin inhibitors is not known.…”

Calliandra selloi Macbride trypsin inhibitor: Isolation, characterization, stability, spectroscopic analyses

“…Other biotechnological application reported for protease inhibitors is that they can inhibit growth of transformed cells, i.e. thereby showing anticarcinogenic properties (Clawson, 1996;Das and Mukhopadhyay, 1994;Kennedy, 1998).…”