Developing New Small Molecular Drugs for Prostate Cancer Therapy

Most of the early prostate cancer has no obvious symptoms, but its malignancy metastasis will cause largely deaths. The treatment options for patients with prostate cancer include traditional surgery, external beam therapy, hormone therapy, small molecular drug and cryosurgery. It was considered non-traditional treatments also can be used in alternative medicines for prostate cancer therapy. There are well-known molecular mechanisms and their pathogenesis, which provide potential targets for drug screening on the prostate cancer. Currently, natural plant extracts or human tissues active ingredients are widely used for the treatment of cancer. Then isolated effective substances in the extract, and further prepared large amounts of small molecule drugs by chemical synthesis. In this review, we summarized four small molecular drugs, abiraterone, docetaxel, isochaihulactone and butylidenephthalide, and their detailed anti-tumor mechanisms. These indicate that small molecular drug is a very efficient way and can be used for prostate cancer treatment.