Potential drug for prostate cancer discovered by diabetes researchers
(NC)-While developing a new drug aimed at painful diabetic neuropathy, the research scientists at IPS Pharma Inc., a spin-off from the University of Sherbrooke, realized that the same new chemical entity (NCE – what a potential new drug is called before it actually becomes a drug) might work equally well against prostate cancer!
The entity is so new that it doesn’t even have a name, just a number, R-954. Its original purpose was to combat various complications of diabetes, including one related to nerve damage or neuropathy. Since some anti-cancer drugs also cause nerve-related pain (called chemotherapy-induced neuropathy), the team of scientists was looking at whether R-954 could also combat other kinds of neuropathy, when they noticed that it could stop prostate cancer cells from growing.
“We did what we described as “a quick-and-dirty experiment” in a controlled pre-clinical setting and we found that R-954 was able to block tumor development of prostate cancer cells that were resistant to chemotherapy,” says Dr. Battistini.
Now, with the financial support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Millenia Hope Inc., a Montreal-based company that obtained the licensing rights from the University of Sherbrooke, Dr. Battistini is conducting additional tests to further test R-954 as a tool against prostate cancer, both alone and in combination with existing anti-cancer drugs. In addition, work will continue on the effectiveness of R-954 against chemotherapy-induced neuropathy.
“We are hitting two targets with one stone,” says Dr. Battistini.
Even better, he says, is that because R-954 is already in clinical trials for its original purpose – diabetic neuropathy – it will be able to move into testing in prostate cancer patients more quickly, ultimately making a potential treatment available much sooner to men suffering from prostate cancer.
Credit: www.newscanada.com
