Forskolin: A potential antimetastatic agent

✍ Scribed by Kailash C. Agarwal; Robert E. Parks Jr

• Book ID: 102276922
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 426 KB
• Volume: 32
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/ijc.2910320622

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Forskolin, a diterpene from the roots of an Indian plant, Coleus forskohlii, is a potent platelet aggregation inhibitor and has been examined for its effects on (a) tumor‐induced human platelet aggregation and (b) pulmonary tumor colonization in mice. These studies employed a subline of B16 murine melanoma, BI6‐FIO (highly meta‐static to lungs). Forskolin (2 μM) strongly inhibits the melanoma cell‐induced human platelet aggregation. A single dose of forskolin (82 μg/mouse) administered in‐ traperitoneally 30 or 60 min prior to tail vein injection of cultured BI6‐FIO cells (2 or 3 × 10s cells/mouse) reduced tumor colonization in the lungs by more than 70%. Similar results were obtained in three separate experiments. These findings raise the possibility that forskolin could prove of value in the clinic for the prevention of cancer metastasis.