Copper may be key to killing Hormone Refractory Prostate cancer

Prostate cancer cell growth reduced
when a copper-activated drug is used

Prostate Cancer’s Penchant for Copper May Be a Fatal Flaw - Duke Medicine
Prostate cancer's penchant for copper may be a fatal flaw - Medical News Today
Prostate cancer cells tricked into self-destruction because of their hunger for copper | News | Pharmaceutical Journal
Copper Plus Disulfiram May Be Effective For Men with Progressive Prostate Cancer - Cancer Therapy Advisor

Researchers at Duke Medicine have found a way to kill prostate cancer cells by delivering a trove of copper along with a drug that selectively destroys the diseased cells brimming with the mineral, leaving non-cancer cells healthy.

The combination approach, which uses two drugs already commercially available for other uses, could soon be tested in clinical trials among patients with late-stage disease.
"This proclivity for copper uptake is something we have known could be an Achilles' heel in prostate cancer tumors as well as other cancers," said Donald McDonnell, Ph.D., [Linkedin] chairman of the Duke Department of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology and senior author of a study published Oct. 15, 2014, in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association of Cancer Research.
Copper Signaling Axis as a Target for Prostate Cancer Therapeutics
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Androgens, the male hormones that fuel prostate cancer, increase the copper accumulation in the cancer cells. McDonnell said this finding could make the combination of disulfiram or similar compounds and copper especially beneficial for men who have been on hormone therapies that have failed to slow tumor growth.

“Unfortunately, hormone therapies do not cure prostate cancer, and most patients experience relapse of their disease to a hormone-refractory or castration-resistant state,” McDonnell said. “Although tremendous progress has been made in treating prostate cancer, there is clearly a need for different approaches, and our findings provide an exciting new avenue to explore.”

McDonnell said clinical trials of the combination therapy are planned in upcoming months. 

A “COPPER BULLET” TO KILL CANCER
Clioquinol, a therapeutic agent for Alzheimer's d... [Cancer Res. 2007] - PubMed - NCBI

A drug normally used to treat Alzheimer's disease may act as a “copper bullet,” killing tumor cells by coating itself in copper ions, according to research derived in part from studies at the APS. Researchers from Wayne State University, the Henry Ford Hospital, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Shandong University using Bio-CAT beamline 18-ID-D at the APS found that the drug clioquinol, when mixed with copper, killed two types of prostate cancer cell in Petri dishes. The drug without copper also slowed the growth of prostate tumors implanted in mice by up to two-thirds, apparently by soaking up copper ions (charged atoms) present in the implanted tumor cells.
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Many types of cancer typically show high levels of copper, including tumors of the prostate, breast, colon, lung, and brain. Traditional chemotherapy works by poisoning any rapidly growing cell, which includes healthy gut, blood, and hair follicles, resulting in hair loss, nausea, and other unpleasant side effects. If only high concentrations of copper trigger clioquinol's harmful effects, these researchers noted, then the drug might selectively kill tumor cells, causing fewer side effects than other chemo-therapies. The researchers further noted that two clinical trials of the molecule as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease did not reveal any significant side effects.