Abstract
Cervical cancer (CC) is responsible of higher morbidity and mortality in the world. To understand the pharmacologic drugs’ efficacy in CC therapy, we investigated the ability of some widely used or potential anti-cancer drugs (alpha- and beta-naphthoflavone, clotrimazole, dimethoxybenzoquinone, paclitaxel, rifampicin, and RU-486) to agonize or antagonize with nuclear receptors: aryl hydrocarbon receptors (AhR) and pregnane X receptors (PXR). To achieve this goal, we performed our study on positive transfected HeLa cell lines, a representative cell line model for CC. In this paper, a study of the recent patents for the importance of these drugs as AhR or PXR agonists or antagonists was evaluated. Because little is known about the implication of AhR and PXR in cancer therapy, our results could be helpful for the design of future CC therapeutics. Future studies could lead to a better understanding of AhR and PXR transactivation/inhibition implication in CC; and lead to a better knowledge of CC therapy.