LITHIUM SALTS IN EXPERIMENTAL ONCOLOGY (REVIEW)

Abstract

Recently, lithium salts have been considered as potential compounds for targeted therapy that can reduce tumor growth. There are a large number of publications indicating the effects of lithium on the signaling pathways used by tumor cells for growth and development, and have demonstrated that lithium can be used as antitumor agent in experimental oncology. The promise of using lithium salts to develop anticancer drugs is related to the fact that lithium has 2 main intracellular targets: glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) and inositol monophosphatase (IMPase), the inhibition of which by lithium can induce cancer cell death by apoptosis or autophagy. Lithium has been shown to block the proliferation of cancer cells by cell cycle arrest in the G2 /M phase, and also stimulates apoptosis and autophagy in cancer cells. This review summarizes data on the transport of lithium across cell membranes, characterizes its main intracellular targets and presents the results of studies in which lithium was used in experimental cancer therapy of various localization with an emphasis on signaling pathways used by cancer cells for growth and metastasis.

Keywords

• experimental oncology
• lithium salts
• gsk-3β
• impase
• apoptosis
• autophagy