In This Issue

Identification of drug candidate against prostate cancer from the aspect of somatic cell reprogramming Page 1017–26 Prostate cancer (PCA) is one of the leading causes of cancer death in men. Although there are many therapeutic options available, malignant PCA may often be resistant to treatment. Kosaka and colleagues sought to use a specialized cell selection system to isolate PCA cells that are resistant to a particular chemotherapeutic agent, docetaxel. After isolating the cells, the authors identified a non-chemotherapeutic drug, ribavirin, that improved the efficacy of docetaxel in killing PCA cells. Ribavirin is an antiviral drug that has not previously been proposed as an anti-PCA therapy. Kosaka and coworkers propose that, through a novel mechanism of genetic reprogramming, ribavirin had the effect of “converting” docetaxel-resistant PCA cells to docetaxelsensitive cells. The authors call their novel method Drug Efficacy Reprogramming and suggest that it may open entirely new avenues for drug discovery in the fight against cancer. doi: 10.1111/cas.12183