Push cancer cells in a brain tumor to “eat themselves” and therefore disappear, is what researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have succeeded in doing in mice. To do this, they combined two families of drugs: antidepressants and anticoagulants. With this cocktail of drugs, the brain tumour stopped growing and the mice that tested it lived twice as long as the mice without specific treatment.
“This new therapeutic strategy in an attempt to conquer glioblastoma (the most common and aggressive of brain tumors) is quite provocative. But it is exciting to imagine that the combination of two relatively inexpensive drugs could make a difference in the treatment of patients with a fatal form of brain cancer, “said Professor Douglas Hanahan, who led this study.
For this experiment, the mice were given this combination therapy five days per week, with a 10 to 15 minute interval between drugs. The antidepressant was given by mouth and the anticoagulant was injected. The two drugs then worked together to hyper-stimulate autophagy, a cell recycling system that causes cancer cells to die.
“It should be noted that these drugs did not cure the cancer but rather delayed the progression of the disease and modestly prolonged the lifespan of the mice. It seems likely that these two drugs will need to be combined with new classes of anti-cancer drugs to that patients can take advantage of their advantage “insisted Professor Hanahan.
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