The aim of our study was to develop ursolic acid (UA) prodrugs in order to overcome UA's weakness, which has an extremely low bioavailability. UA-medoxomil (NX-201), one of our UA prodrugs, showed an improved bioavailability about 200times better than UA in rodent model. According to in vivo test performed with PANC-1 xenograft SCID mouse model, tumor growth rate decreased dose-dependently and 100mg/kg dose of NX-201 had an anticancer effect comparable to gemcitabine. Most of all the combination of NX-201 (50mg/kg, po, daily) and gemcitabine (40mg/kg, iv, 2timesperweek) even reduced tumor size after three weeks.
Keywords: Anticancer; Bioavailability; Pancreatic cancer; Prodrug; Ursolic acid.
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