Methods to Analyze Chemopreventive Effect of Silibinin on Prostate Cancer Biomarkers Protein Expression

Prostate cancer is now diagnosed mostly at an early stage, and therefore, chemopreventive strategies could be useful to prevent further progression of the disease and to reduce the morbidity and mortality due to this malignancy. Here, we have described methods (immunoblotting, immunofluorescence, and immunohistochemistry) that could be employed to screen and validate the effect of chemopreventive agents on the protein expression of various cancer-related biomarkers for proliferation, apoptosis, angiogenesis, and metastasis. As an example, we have discussed chemopreventive efficacy of silibinin against prostate cancer as well as its effect on several molecular biomarkers associated with this malignancy. Overall, the methods used to study cancer biomarker protein expression that we describe in this chapter are extremely useful in cancer chemopreventive studies.