Transcription factors: molecular targets for prostate cancer intervention by phytochemicals

With increasing incidence of cancer at most of the sites, and growing economic burden and associated psychological and emotional trauma, it is becoming clearer that more efforts are needed for cancer cure. Since most of the chemotherapeutic drugs are non-selective because they are also toxic to the normal cells, new and improved strategies are needed that selectively target the killing of cancer cells. Since aberrant activation of numerous signaling pathways is a key element of cancer cell survival and growth, blocking all of them is not that practical, which leads to the step where most of them commonly converge; the transcription factors. Recent research efforts, therefore, are also directed on targeting the activity and activation of transcription factors, which ultimately control the expression of genes that are involved in almost all aspects of cell biology. One class of agents that is becoming increasingly successful, not only in targeting signaling cascades, but also transcription factors is phytochemicals present in diet and those consumed as supplement. The added advantage with these agents is that they are mostly non-toxic when compared to chemotherapeutic agents. This review focuses on the efficacy of various phytochemicals in targeting transcription factors such as AR, Sp1, STATs, E2F, Egr1, c-Myc, HIF-1 alpha, NF-kappaB, AP-1, ETS2, GLI and p53 in the context of prostate cancer intervention.