Antidepressant shows promise as cancer treatment
An antidepressant combined with a drug derived from vitamin A could be used to treat a common adult form of leukaemia, according to laboratory research led by a team at The Institute of Cancer Research.
A retinoid called all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), which is a vitamin A-derivative, is already used successfully to treat a rare sub-type of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), however this drug has not been effective for the more common types of AMLs.
Dr Arthur Zelent and colleagues have been working to unlock the potential of retinoids to treat other patients with AML, and showed the key could be an antidepressant called tranylcypromine (TCP).
ATRA works by encouraging the leukaemia cells to mature and die naturally. The team thinks the failure of AML to respond to this drug may be due to genes that ATRA normally targets becoming switched off.
In their search for a drug that could be used to reboot the activity of ATRA, the team looked to an emerging area of research called epigenetics. Epigenetic drugs do not target genes directly but instead target whether genes are switched on or off. They discovered that inhibiting an enzyme called LSD1, using TCP, could switch these genes on again and make the cancer cells susceptible to ATRA.
Along with collaborators at the University of Münster in Germany, the team has started a Phase II clinical trial of the drug combination in AML patients.
