Skip to main content
An official website of the United States government
Government Funding Lapse
Because of a lapse in government funding, the information on this website may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the website may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted.

The NIH Clinical Center (the research hospital of NIH) is open. For more details about its operating status, please visit cc.nih.gov.

Updates regarding government operating status and resumption of normal operations can be found at opm.gov.

oleandrin

A lipid soluble cardiac glycoside with potential antineoplastic activity. Upon administration, oleandrin specifically binds to and inhibits the alpha3 subunit of the Na/K-ATPase pump in human cancer cells. This may inhibit the phosphorylation of Akt, upregulate MAPK, inhibit NF-kb activation and inhibit FGF-2 export and may downregulate mTOR thereby inhibiting p70S6K and S6 protein expression. All of this may lead to an induction of apoptosis. As cancer cells with relatively higher expression of the alpha3 subunit and with limited expression of the alpha1 subunit are more sensitive to oleandrin, one may predict the tumor response to treatment with lipid-soluble cardiac glycosides such as oleandrin based on the tumors Na/K-ATPase pump protein subunit expression. Overexpression of the alpha3 subunit in tumor cells correlates with tumor proliferation.
Code name:PBI-05204
Search NCI's Drug Dictionary