A study published in the September edition of Clinical Cancer Research suggests that anti-viral agents used to treat HIV infection have potential as cancer treatments.
Protease inhibitors were approved for human use in 1993 and are now commonly used for treating HIV/AIDS infection. A study by Gills and collaborators published last month in the journal Clinical Cancer Research suggests potential for some protease inhibitors to be used for treatment of cancer as well.
Protease inhibitors interfere with protein pathways that result in break down of proteins in both HIV infection and cancer.
Development of cancer drugs is expensive (approximately $1 billion) and time-consuming (upwards of 15 years from conception to FDA approval). The authors suggest that finding new indications for drugs already approved by the FDA may accelerate development and reduce the cost of new cancer drugs.
In a study of 6 protease inhibitors against 60 cell lines derived from 9 tumour types, only three were effective: the two most effective HIV protease inhibitors were nelfinavir and saquinavir, both of which caused large amounts of cancer cell destruction and had similar activity in ability to inhibit cancer cell proliferation
Approximately 8,000,000 Americans will die from cancer in the time it will take to develop, trial and FDA-approve a new treatment drug.
Source:
Gills, JJ, J LoPiccolo, J Tsurutani, RH Shoemaker, CJM Best, MS Abu-Asab et al. Nelfinavir, A Lead HIV Protease Inhibitor, Is a Broad-Spectrum, Anticancer Agent that Induces Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress, Autophagy, and Apoptosis In Vitro and In Vivo. Clinical Cancer Research 2007;13(17) September 1, 2007.
