Dasatinib May Have Potential as an Antidiabetic Drug
Dasatinib, a drug that often is used to treat certain types of leukaemia, may have significant potential as an antidiabetic drug, according to new research published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Dasatinib is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor used to treat tumours and malignant tissue, as well as chronic myelogenous leukaemia. Dasatinib is a senolytic drug, which target senescent cells that accumulate in many ageing tissues and at sites of pathology in chronic diseases. Senolytic drugs appear to delay, prevent or alleviate age-related changes, chronic diseases and geriatric syndromes in animal studies.
“Our findings suggest that dasatinib or related senolytic drugs may become diabetic therapies,” said senior author Robert Pignolo, MD, PhD. “More study is needed to determine whether these findings also are observed in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus but without underlying malignant disease.”
Researchers used records for a total of 9.3 million individuals from 1994 to 2019 who were screened for use of either dasatinib or imatinib, another tyrosine kinase inhibitor that was approved for treatment of a type of leukemia in 2001 but with weak senolytic activity. Of those patients, 279 were treated with imatinib and 118 with dasatinib, and after further screening, a total of 48 patients were included in the study.
The findings show that dasatinib lowers serum glucose in patients with pre-existing type 2 diabetes to a greater extent than imatinib and comparable to first-line diabetic medications such as metformin and sulfonylureas.
More work is needed to determine whether the antidiabetic effect of dasatinib is due largely to its senolytic properties, explained Dr Pignolo. If it is, the effectiveness of combining dasatinib with another senolytic drug such as quercetin may be greater than with dasatinib alone.
“This study was really the first proof-of-concept that a senolytic drug may have substantial long-term beneficial effects in humans,” Dr Pignolo says. “According to research in animal models, it is not necessary to give senolytic drugs continuously, and so patients may need only take a drug such as dasatinib every few weeks, reducing possible side effects.”
Source: EurekAlert!
