Brunel University Researchers Discover Prozac Can Be Used To Treat Pediatric Cancer
Source: Thailand Medical News Jan 11, 2020 4 years, 3 months, 2 weeks, 6 hours, 16 minutes ago
The controversial anti-depressant drug
Prozac could be used to tackle one of the deadliest childhood tumours and possibly other types of
cancer, medical scientists said.
Prozac or
fluoxetine as it is called by its chemical name, works to fight the highly aggressive neuroblastoma, which is most common in young children.
The research breakthrough led by
Brunel University London could spare young patients treatment with highly toxic cocktails of chemotherapy drugs and radiation.
Professor Arturo Sala from Brunel University, London told
Thailand Medical News, "
Prozac has the potential to be used in children with
neuroblastoma as a new and effective anti-
cancer drug, but with less toxicity than current
cancer treatments."
The research findings were published the journal
Oncogenesis.
The team showed that
Prozac can stabilise a protein encoded by the gene
CDKN1B that kills
neuroblastoma cells and slows their growth. And crucially, the doses needed are safe for children, which they call 'a major clinical advance'.
The medical researchers found significantly fewer metastases (when
cancer spreads from one part of the body to another) in organs such as liver, kidneys and bone marrows in mice on
Prozac.
The intention to use
Prozac to treat
cancer came after previous studies found people on long-term treatment for psychotic illnesses have lower
cancer rates.
Collaborating with Italy's D'Annunzio University of Chieti–Pescara, the researchers made the discovery using a gene-editing tool called CRISPR. CRISPR let them target the
CDKN1B gene, which is downregulated in
cancers with mutation of the oncogene MYC, such as
neuroblastoma.
Fluoxetine could potentially treat other
cancers too, said Prof Sala: "Since
Prozac targets MYC-expressing
cancer cells, it could possibly be used to treat a wide range of human
cancers with high MYC expression, for example big killers such as breast
cancer or prostate
cancer."
The
pediatric cancer called
neuroblastoma is the most commonly diagnosed
cancer in the first year of life and is responsible for most
cancer deaths in babies.
Neuroblastoma is a cancerous tumor that begins in nerve tissue of infants and very young children. The abnormal cell
s are often found in the nerve tissue that is present in the unborn baby and later develops into a detectable tumor. Even with surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, the average patient with high-risk metastatic disease lives less than 3 years. Relapse is common, so finding a less toxic drug to prolong remission could be life-changing.
The study results, Prof Sala said, "warrant the opening of clinical trials in which long-term
Prozac treatments could be included in consolidation or post-consolidation therapies in patients who are at high risk of disease relapse".
Reference: Sandra Bibbo' et al. Repurposing a psychoactive drug for children with cancer: p27Kip1-dependent inhibition of metastatic neuroblastomas by Prozac, Oncogenesis (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41389-019-0186-3
