60-Year-Old Drug Shows New Promise for Inherited Cancer
27 August 2009 - Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) have shown that a chemotherapy drug invented in the 1940s has the potential to work against a genetic condition linked to bowel and other cancers.
HNPCC is a hereditary condition involved in around five per cent of all bowel cancer cases. It also puts people at increased risk of developing stomach, womb, ovarian, kidney and other cancers.
Almost 40 per cent of people with HNPCC have a faulty MSH2 gene, so scientists at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre at the ICR in London looked for drugs that selectively kill cells containing this damaged gene. They tested a range of drugs on cells with the faulty MSH2 gene and found a drug called methotrexate destroyed the cells particularly well. Methotrexate is similar to a normal molecule called folinic acid, which is required for copying DNA. The drug prevents cells from making and repairing DNA- a process needed for cancer growth.
Methotrexate was one of the first chemotherapy drugs to be invented in the 1940s and is still used to treat a number of cancers today. But until now, it has not commonly been used to treat people with HNPCC.
