Pro-apoptotic effect of aurothiomalate in prostate cancer cells

It has been recently demonstrated that small gold compounds could have a potential anti-tumoral activity. Here, we report that aurothiomalate (ATM), a gold compound already used in clinical therapy for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, has a pro-apoptotic effect in aggressive prostate cancer (PC3U) cells. In contrast, treatment of human primary epithelial prostate cells (PrEC) with ATM did not cause apoptosis. We demonstrated that ATM is able to disrupt the PKCiota-Par6 complex in PC3U cells and that this disruption leads to the activation of ERK in a dose-dependent manner. Interestingly, we also showed that ERK acts upstream of the activation of caspase 3, leading to apoptosis. ATM treatment also causes activation of p38 and JNK MAP kinases. Moreover we could link ATM treatment to activation of the mitochondrial or so called intrinsic pathway, as we observed release of cytochrome c from mitochondria to cytoplasm, suggesting that the mitochondrial pathway is involved in the pro-apoptotic effect mediated by ATM. Taken together our data suggest that ATM could be a new promising drug for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer.