Histamine and histamine receptor antagonists in cancer biology.

Article Details

Citation

Copy to clipboard

Blaya B, Nicolau-Galmes F, Jangi SM, Ortega-Martinez I, Alonso-Tejerina E, Burgos-Bretones J, Perez-Yarza G, Asumendi A, Boyano MD

Histamine and histamine receptor antagonists in cancer biology.

Inflamm Allergy Drug Targets. 2010 Jul;9(3):146-57.

PubMed ID

20632959 [ View in PubMed

]

Abstract

Histamine has been demonstrated to be involved in cell proliferation, embryonic development, and tumour growth. These various biological effects are mediated through the activation of specific histamine receptors (H1, H2, H3, and H4) that differ in their tissue expression patterns and functions. Although many in vitro and in vivo studies of the modulatory roles of histamine in tumour development and metastasis have been reported, the effect of histamine in the progression of some types of tumours remains controversial; however, recent findings on the role of histamine in the immune system have shed new light on this question. This review focuses on the recent advances in understanding the roles of histamine and its receptors in tumour biology. We report our recent observations of the anti-tumoural effect of H1 histamine antagonists on experimental and human melanomas. We have found that in spite of exogenous histamine stimulated human melanoma cell proliferation, clonogenic ability and migration activity in a dose-dependent manner, the melanoma tumour growth was not modulated by in vivo histamine treatment. On the contrary, terfenadine-treatment in vitro induced melanoma cell death by apoptosis and in vivo terfenadine treatment significantly inhibited tumour growth in murine models. These observations increase our understanding of cancer biology and may inspire novel anticancer therapeutic strategies.

DrugBank Data that Cites this Article

Drug Targets

Drug	Target	Kind	Organism	Pharmacological Action	Actions
Histamine	Histamine H4 receptor	Protein	Humans	Unknown	Agonist	Details