Doxycycline, Azithromycin and Vitamin C (DAV): A potent combination therapy for targeting mitochondria and eradicating cancer stem cells (CSCs).

Doxycycline, Azithromycin and Vitamin C (DAV): A potent combination therapy for targeting mitochondria and eradicating cancer stem cells (CSCs). Aging (Albany NY). 2019 Apr 19;: Authors: Fiorillo M, Tóth F, Sotgia F, Lisanti MP Abstract Here, we devised a new strategy for eradicating cancer stem cells (CSCs), via a "synthetic-metabolic" approach, involving two FDA-approved antibiotics and a dietary vitamin supplement. This approach was designed to induce a "rho-zero-like" phenotype in cancer cells. This strategy effectively results in the synergistic eradication of CSCs, using vanishingly small quantities of two antibiotics. The 2 metabolic targets are i) the large mitochondrial ribosome and ii) the small mitochondrial ribosome. Azithromycin inhibits the large mitochondrial ribosome as an off-target side-effect. In addition, Doxycycline inhibits the small mitochondrial ribosome as an off-target side-effect. Vitamin C acts as a mild pro-oxidant, which can produce free radicals and, as a consequence, induces mitochondrial biogenesis. Remarkably, treatment with a combination of Doxycycline (1 μM), Azithromycin (1 μM) plus Vitamin C (250 μM) very potently inhibited CSC propagation by >90%, using the MCF7 ER(+) breast cancer cell line as a model system. The strong inhibitory effects of this DAV triple combination therapy on mitochondrial oxygen consumption and ATP production were directly validated using metabolic flux analysis. Th...
Source: Aging - Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Tags: Aging (Albany NY) Source Type: research