University of Cincinnati clinician-scientist Soma Sengupta, MD, PhD, says that new findings from a study conducted by her and Daniel Pomeranz Krummel, PhD, showed promising results towards enhancing the effectiveness of traditional cancer treatments with a simple anti-anxiety drug, repurposed and proven effective against melanomas.
Sengupta said, “While physicians can often quickly find and treat melanoma of the skin, metastatic melanoma, or melanoma that has spread to other parts of the body, often the brain, is a lethal cancer. Often, patients who receive immunotherapy, which uses the patient’s own immune system to treat the condition, do not have good responses. They also experience many uncomfortable side effects that impact their quality of life.”
By using a new class of sedatives (related to diazepam) to target GABA receptors, radiation or immune therapy could be enhanced, with reduced side effects. Animal study results showed that the drug allowed better infiltration of immune cells into the tumour cells, causing them to shrink, or in some cases even disappear.
“Our long-term goal is to add this new class of drugs to a patient’s radiation and immunotherapy treatment,” said Sengupta. “We hope this will help patients avoid side effects, and that by adding this drug to the regimens, we will reduce costs, since we think the treatments will become more effective, and in turn, doses of standard treatments can be lowered. More studies are needed, but this is a promising new approach using a non-toxic drug from a class of compounds that have already been approved for anxiety, but now used for a serious condition that claims lives every day.”
Source: News-Medical.Net
