Investigating the effect of boron compounds on serin proteases in prostate cancer cells

Serine proteases is a group of proteases that have important role in cell growth and differentiation. Group is made up of 175 predicted members in humans. The most of them are secreted proteases. They are often present as zymogens and need to be activated by specific and limited proteolysis. Several serine proteases are known as factors included in the genesis of prostate cancer. Role of PSA, MMPs and other proteases in prostate cancer is related to degradation of extracellular matrix and allowing cancer cells to metastasize toward another organs like bones, lungs etc. Targeting these serine proteases with different therapeutical agents can be important strategy for prostate cancer treatment. Analysis of results from literatures related to chemical element boron and its compounds and their effects on prostate cancer cells shown that when used in appropriate doses, different boron compounds such as boric acid, could be potential curing agent for prostate cancer. Therefore, in our study, we used three different concentrations of boron compounds D1, D3 and D6 to see if there is any effect on androgen receptor as well as particular serine proteases. We examined effects of these boron compounds onto two sets of LNCaP cell line. According to results we obtained from MTT, qPCR and Western blot analysis, we concluded that boron compounds could be potentially effective in decreasing levels of AR and automatically decrease abnormal proliferation of cancer cells. Therefore, examined boron compounds used in right concentrations, could be curative agents in prostate cancer therapy.