© 2000 by Oxford University Press
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 92, No. 4, 298,
February 16, 2000
© 2000 Oxford University Press
NEWS |
Old Drugs Find New Life
Just as celecoxib began as an arthritis drug and is now enjoying success as a potential cancer preventive, several other "crossover" drugs are drawing interest for their activity against cancer.
Sulindac, an inexpensive nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, is moving into large NCI-sponsored clinical studies as a chemopreventive agent against colorectal and duodenum cancers.
Meanwhile, lovastatin, a successful cholesterol-lowering drug marketed by Merck and Co., Whitehouse Station, N.J., is also undergoing laboratory testing as a chemopreventive agent for colorectal cancer. Last year a group at Columbia University, New York, reported that adding lovastatin to sulindac appears to augment the preventive effects of sulindac. Other researchers are testing lovastatin as a treatment, adding it to chemotherapy stalwarts such as 5-FU, cisplatin and tumor necrosis factor-alpha, noting that such combinations enhance anti-cancer activity in lymphoma, neuroblastoma, melanoma, and colorectal cancer cell lines.
A drug developed for high blood pressure and later abandoned has found new life after a group from the California Institute of Technology published a study showing that the compound shrinks melanoma tumors in nude mice. Called BQ-788, the drug was developed by Banyu Pharmaceutical Co. of Japan, which tested the drug for toxicity in humans before discarding it. That early testing did not reveal any major toxicities, which will give BQ-788 a head start if it reaches clinical trials.
Balding men have a double crossover. Finasteride, originally developed by Merck for benign prostatic hyperplasia, is FDA-approved for hair loss and also is under study as a prostate cancer preventive. The drug works by binding the enzyme that converts testosterone to its more potent metabolic product, 5-alpha-dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Whether decreasing the amount of DHT reduces incidence of prostate cancer will not be known until 2004, when 18,000 men in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial have prostate biopsies.
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