Allergy Drug Slows Pancreatic Cancer
Posted on: Wednesday, 20 December 2006, 00:00 CST
Allergy drug cromolyn largely slows tumors and increases the effectiveness of chemotherapy in mice with pancreatic cancer, says a new U.S. study.
The results of the study, done at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, were so promising that a human clinical trial will begin in the near future, researchers said.
After cromolyn inhibited the growth of pancreatic cancer cells in the lab, the team tried the drug in mice with pancreatic tumors.
When the mice were given cromolyn alone, tumor growth was slowed by 70 percent. When the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine was added, growth was slowed by 85 percent (gemcitabine alone produced a 50 percent growth reduction). Since cromolyn is normally given topically through an inhaler, nasal spray, or eye drops, the researchers said they are studying how to deliver the drug internally.
Pancreatic cancer is 95 percent fatal, and Craig Logsdon, who led the research, began looking for an agent to treat it five years ago.
He searched for genes that produced proteins secreted only by cancer cells and found one called S100P.
After Logsdon determined that S100P was overexpressed in pancreatic cancer but not found at all in normal pancreatic cells, he looked for ways to block its effect. He came across a Japanese study on allergies that found that several of the S100 family of proteins stuck to anti-allergy drugs, including cromolyn, which rendered them ineffective.
The study appears in the December 20 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Source: United Press International
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