The activity of epitestosterone in hormone dependent prostate tumour models.

Epitestosterone has been shown previously to counteract the testosterone activity in some experimental models. In the present study the activity of epitestosterone in an in vitro model of human LNCaP/FCS prostate cells and in vitro in Dunning R 3327-GH rat prostate carcinoma was tested. In LNCaP/FGC cells cultivated with fetal calf serum (FCS) treated with dextran-coated charcoal epitestosterone displayed rather androgenic than antiandrogenic properties, whereas the cultivation with native FCS resulted in a very weak inhibition of tumour cell growth with epitestosterone in higher concentration. The growth of Dunning R 3327-GH carcinoma of prostate was very weakly enhanced by epitestosterone alone as late as at the end of the 5-week experiment. Epitestosterone did not significantly inhibit the testosterone stimulated tumour growth.