Thursday, September 24, 2015
Can Combining Two Common Drugs Make Cancer Cells Eat Themselves? Spoiler: Yes
A very interesting study just came out that suggest combining the use of antidepressants and blood thinners may have the ability to cause autophagy in certain brain tumors which means the tumors will eat themselves. Glioblastomas, also known as gliomas, are a brain tumor that present in the astrocytes of the brain. These tumors are particularly deadly with a median survival rate of 2-3 years. With this little amount of time it is difficult to form a therapy that will have success. The results of this treatment is not a reduction in tumor generation or an increase in degeneration but instead it lengthens the survival rate, in mice it was shown to double the survival time. If this were successful in humans not only would it increase the ability of other therapies by giving them more time to have an effect, it would also be able to give patients and their families more time together. A median survival length of 2-3 years means half of patients don't make it that long. If a mother or father or brother is diagnosed and given 2 years to live it would be very difficult to come to terms that quickly While this potential therapy would not prevent eventual death, it would give valuable time to patients who have very little. The major advantage of a treatment such as this is its cost effectiveness and non-toxicity. So many chemotherapy drugs are incredibly harsh on the body and have massive side effects. If this combination turns out to be effective it would come without significant side effects. The one risk would be an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, but this risk would be unlikely to effect late stage glioma patients.
A major point that this study brings up is the use of preexisting drugs for treatment in diseases they were not originally designed for. This has occurred many times to great success, the most popular example is Viagra which was designed to treat hypertension but found a much more lucrative use. It really shows how taking a side effect and seeing whether it can be used as a main benefit can be a rewarding practice. Doing this can also bypass the normal protocol of testing possible side effects because its already been done for existing drugs on the market. More studies will surely come from this avenue of research.
Link to article: http://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/abstract/S1535-6108(15)00303-7
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This is very interesting especially with the focus now turing towards creating non invasive forms of medication for cancer treatment. I am curious if there have been any other studies using mouse models indicating that this double drug combination can also be used to treat other forms of cancer? Did they say anything about the way the drugs caused autophagy? Did the blood thinners cause a reduction in angiogenesis causing the cells to result in self consumption to gain nutrients? Overall its an incredible avenue that would be amazing to learn about!
ReplyDeleteSo there was evidence that TCA's or tricyclic antidepressants had a role in autophagy before this study but not to the degree they found when combining it with an anticoagulant. This study (link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25714272) found that antidepressants may act via FK506 binding protein 5 to change phosphorylation and protein levels in autophagy markers. This study and others before it suggest that increased cAMP levels can induce autophagy and the levels of cAMP found after the combined therapy were much higher than either control or either monotherapy. This is most likely how it is happening. As far as treating other cancers the paper doesn't directly address that but i would imagine the effect should be similar in any apoptosis-resistant tumor cells. It should certainly be explored in future work.
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