{"id":3239942,"date":"2024-07-19T08:33:43","date_gmt":"2024-07-19T12:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/?p=3239942"},"modified":"2024-07-19T08:33:43","modified_gmt":"2024-07-19T12:33:43","slug":"diabetes-drug-reduces-lung-cancer-drug-resistance-3239942","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/diabetes-drug-reduces-lung-cancer-drug-resistance-3239942\/","title":{"rendered":"Diabetes drug may make lung cancer treatment more effective"},"content":{"rendered":"
A medication used to treat diabetic neuropathy may make chemotherapy treatments more effective for patients with lung cancer, according to a new study.<\/p>\n
Despite surgical and chemotherapy treatment, more than 50% of non-metastatic, non-small lung cancer patients see recurrences, in large part because of drug-resistant cancer cells.<\/p>\n
Researchers have identified a way to make these cells more susceptible to chemotherapy, says study author Jussuf Kaifi, a thoracic surgeon at the University of Missouri Health Care and an assistant professor of surgery at the university’s School of Medicine.<\/p>\n
“Traditional treatments for lung cancer, including chemotherapy, often have little to no effect on the cancer because of drug resistance<\/a>,” Kaifi says.<\/p>\n “It is a major cause of mortality in patients, so finding ways to circumvent drug and chemotherapy resistance is vital to improving patient outcomes.”<\/p>\n The study examined 10 non-small cell lung cancer tumors, half of which were identified as drug resistant. The drug-resistant tumors showed overexpression of a certain enzyme, AKR1B10. When treated with the diabetic neuropathy medication, epalrestat, the tumors became less drug resistant, causing their sensitivity to chemotherapy to significantly increase.<\/p>\n Epalrestat is available in several countries and well-tolerated by patients, but it is not yet approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States. The medication is currently in high-level clinical trials as part of the FDA’s approval process. If given FDA approval, epalrestat could be fast-tracked as an anti-cancer drug for lung cancer patients.<\/p>\n “In general, developing new drugs for cancer treatment is an extremely lengthy, expensive and inefficient process,” Kaifi says.<\/p>\n “In contrast, ‘repurposing’ these drugs to other diseases is much faster and cheaper. In view of overcoming drug resistance<\/a>, epalrestat can rapidly be advanced to the clinic to improve cure rates in lung cancer patients.”<\/p>\n The research appears in Clinical Cancer Research<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n