With few treatments to stop or replace Alzheimer’s disease, scientists have sought cancer drugs as a possible measure of cognitive decline.
Cases of Alzheimer’s cases are growing in the US and worldwide due to the aging population, but illnesses are not cured. Attempts to develop new treatments that slow down the progress of the disease rather than reduce symptoms often have failed.
The Food and Drug Administration is currently confirmed by only two medicines – Antibody Therapy Leqembi and Kisunla – to slow down the progression of early Alzheimer’s disease, and scientists say their benefits are limited.
Some pharmaceutical companies have stopped or abandoned their Alzheimer’s drug development programs due to unsuccessful attempts. Others try to take existing medicines, including popular weight loss drugs, to fight Alzheimer’s disease.
With this in mind, researchers at the University of California San Francisco have performed extensively search for drugs that could be repeated in the treatment of this condition – theoretically, reducing the time of drugs to patients. They included more than 1300 drugs of various classes of drugs, including antipsychotic drugs, antibiotics, antifungal and chemotherapeutic drugs. Then they examined how those drugs affected the gene expression.
Their new study, published on Monday, has found two cancer drugs as the best candidates to reduce Alzheimer’s risk to patients. In combination, the medicines looked slow or replaced Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice. One of the medicines is usually used to treat breast cancer and the other is effective against colon and lung cancer.
Alzheimer’s disease is associated with significant changes in the genes expressed in the brain, which increases the production of certain proteins and decreased production of others. This imbalance can disrupt brain function and contribute to symptoms such as memory loss.
Less than 90 drug researchers have eliminated the expression of genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in human brain cells. And especially five drugs seem to reduce Alzheimer’s disease in real patients based on electronic medical records. Finally, the authors chose two of the drugs that both confirmed to the FDA for cancer treatment, to try mice.
“We did not expect cancer medicines,” said Marina Sirota, UCSF Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute and Provisional Director.
The authors said the letrozole of breast cancer was altered by gene expression in nerve cells. It seemed that colon and lung cancer drug Irinotecan is changing gene expression in glial cells that support the nervous system. Alzheimer’s disease can destroy nerve cells and cause gluing cells to multiply, causing inflammation in the brain.
To 2020 InvestigationBreast cancer patients with letrozole were less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than patients who did not receive the medicine. Based on 2021 According to the study, Irinotecan’s healing colorectal cancer factors also reduced Alzheimer’s disease.
After testing the medicines in the mouse, the authors of the study found that the combination of two drugs had changed brain degeneration and improved the memory of the mice, which was created by the signs of Alzheimer’s vests as they aged.
Because mice results often do not mean people, researchers expect to try medication in a clinical study with Alzheimer’s disease.
“The creation of a new medicine can take hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, on average more than 10 years. It usually takes just two or three years for this re-medication, and then you can go to a clinical trial, and the cost is much lower,” said Dr. Yadong Huang, Neurology of UCSF Research and Professor Professor.
“We still have not produced or produced any very effective medicines that can really slow down the cognitive decline,” he added.
Part of the difficulty in creating medicines for Alzheimer is the complexity of the disease. Its exact cause is essentially unknown.
So far, according to the authors, it is unclear why cancer drugs appear to be working against Alzheimer. One theory is that breast cancer blocks the production of estrogen, the hormone that controls the expression of many genes. The drug of colon and lung cancer can also block inflammation in the brain, preventing the growth of glial cells – although Huang said there are other options.
Associate Professor of Biochemistry, Pennsylvania State University, dr. Melanie Mcreynolds, who did not participate in the study, proposed another theory.
Its study shows that other types of cancer can help treat Alzheimer’s disease by regulating glucose metabolism, a process in which cells produce energy. McReynolds said the process is necessary for various brain cells to communicate with each other.
“As aging, stress, and illnesses, this communication line disrupts,” she said.
McReynolds said the drug combination tested in a new study can change the downturn of metabolism – what it called “a mystery to contribute to better results with Alzheimer’s disease.”
But it is important to evaluate how Alzheimer’s disease patients tolerate a combination of cancer drugs. Letrozole can cause heat flashes and Irinotecan can cause severe diarrhea. Both drugs can cause nausea and vomiting.
“These drugs have huge side effects, so you must always balance and find out if this type of side effect would be applied to someone who has Alzheimer’s disease,” Sirota said. “It’s not that it’s a slam dunk.”
This article was originally published in nbcnews.com