Breast cancer is the most common and deadliest cancer in women worldwide. Although notable advances have been achieved in the treatment of breast cancer, the overall survival rate of metastatic breast cancer patients is still considerably low due to the development of resistance to breast cancer chemotherapeutic agents and the non-optimal specificity of the current generation of cancer medications. Hence, there is a growing interest in the search for alternative therapeutics with novel anticancer mechanisms. Recently, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have gained much attention due to their cost-effectiveness, high specificity of action, and robust efficacy. However, there are no clinical data available about their efficacy. This warrants the increasing need for clinical trials to be conducted to assess the efficacy of this new class of drugs. Here, we will focus on the recent progress in the use of AMPs for breast cancer therapy and will highlight their modes of action. Finally, we will discuss the combination of AMP-based therapeutics with other breast cancer therapy strategies, including nanotherapy and chemotherapy, which may provide a potential avenue for overcoming drug resistance.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer type in men and is the second cause of death, due to cancer, in patients over 50, after lung cancer. Prostate specific antigen (PSA) is a widely used tumor marker for prostate cancer. Recently, PSA is discovered in non-prostatic cancer tissues in men and women raising doubts about its specificity for prostatic tissues. PSA exists in low serum level in healthy men and in higher levels in many prostate disorders, including prostatitis and prostate cancer. Thus, a supplementary tumor marker is needed to accurately diagnose the cancer and to observe the patient after treatment. Recently, soluble human leukocyte antigen-G (sHLA-G) has been introduced as a new tumor marker for different cancer types, including colorectal, breast, lung, and ovary. The present descriptive-experimental study was carried out including patients with malignant prostate tumor, patients with benign prostate tumor, and a group of health men as the control group, as judged by an oncologist as well as a pathologist. After sterile blood sampling, sHLA-G was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in each group. The data was then analyzed using one-way ANOVA. P≤0.05 was considered as statistically significant. The results showed that the mean of sHLA-G level was high in patients. Also, it was found that there was a significant difference in sHLA serum level between the three groups. The data revealed that sHLA-G can be a novel supplementary tumor marker in addition to PSA to diagnose prostate cancer.