"Patients with castration resistant prostate cancer CRPC usually have a poor prognosis. In part this is due to the cancers ability to resist antiandrogen therapy. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published today May  in Oncotarget shows that combining a CPTA inhibitors with antiandrogen therapy increases the cancers sensitivity to the antiandrogen drug enzalutamide. This is a huge development for men with CRPC that previously did not have many options says Isabel Schlaepfer PhD CU Cancer Center member assistant professor in the Division of Medical Oncology and senior author of the study. There is a critical need for improved therapies for this specific cancer type. Most cells use the energy of glucose sugar. Some prostate cancers evolve to use energy from lipids fat. Previous work shows that metabolizing lipids helps prostate cancer escape antiandrogen therapy. However there are many steps involved in lipid metabolism and researchers have been working to break prostate cancers ability to harness this energy source. In this study the researchers focused on the CPTA enzyme. CPTA helps facilitate the entry of long chain fatty acids into the cells mitochondria for oxidation. This oxidation is vital to lipid metabolism and has been shown to aid cancer cell survival resistance to radiation oxidative stress and activation of oncogenic signaling pathways. We had to find a way to block this pathway so that the cancer would not be able to burn lipid in the mitochondria to acquire energy to resist therapy explains Schlaepfer. In fact we are already able to block the action of the CPTA enzyme. The drug ranolazine is a fat oxidation inhibitor that earned FDA approval in  to treat angina. When Schlaepfer and colleagues experimented with fat burning inhibitors and antiandrogens in cancer cell lines  they found that the addition of ranolazine to antiandrogen therapy made tumors more sensitivity to the antiandrogen drug enzalutamide. This finding may have a huge impact on patients with CRPC that had very few options before says Schlaepfer. Since the drugs are clinically safe a clinical trial can be designed in patients for whom enzalutamide is prescribed."