Researchers led by Professor Bernd Snyder from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) have discovered an effective substance to combat a difficult-to-treat brain tumor.
The substance that has been proven effective in the laboratory and on laboratory mice is Vortioxetine, a cheap antidepressant.
glioblastoma
Glioblastoma is a highly aggressive brain tumor that is currently incurable. Cancer doctors can extend patients’ life expectancy through surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or surgical interventions. However, half of patients die within 12 months of diagnosis.
Finding effective drugs against brain tumors is difficult because many cancer drugs cannot cross the blood-brain barrier to reach the brain. The blood-brain barrier is a natural protective membrane that prevents toxins and pathogens in the blood from reaching the central nervous system. The presence of this barrier limits potential treatment options. So neurologists have long been searching for better drugs that can cross into the brain and kill the tumor.
Se-Yun Lee, a postdoctoral research associate and first author of the study at ETH Zurich, discovered the effective antidepressant drug against glioblastoma using a special screening platform called Pharmacoscopy, a technology that researchers at ETH Zurich have been developing over recent years.
The results of the study were recently published in the journal Nature Medicine on September 20. In this study, the researchers at ETH Zurich worked closely with colleagues from several hospitals, in particular with a group of neurologists Michael Weller and Tobias Weiss at the University Hospital Zurich.
Test hundreds of materials at once
Using pharmacoscopy, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology were able to test hundreds of active substances on living cells taken from human cancer tissue. Their study focused mainly on neuroactive substances that cross the blood-brain barrier, such as antidepressants, Parkinson’s disease medications and antipsychotics. The research team tested up to 130 different substances on tumor tissue taken from 40 patients.
To identify the substances that affect cancer cells, the researchers used imaging and computational analysis techniques. Previously, Snyder and his team had used the pharmacoscopy platform to analyze blood cancers only, and this is the first time they have systematically investigated solid tumors using this method with the goal of repurposing existing drugs.
Lee analyzed fresh cancer tissue from patients who had recently undergone surgery at the University Hospital in Zurich. The ETH researchers then processed the tissue in the lab and examined it using a pharmacoscopy platform. Two days later, the researchers had results showing which agents were effective against the cancer cells and which were not.
The results showed that some, but not all, of the antidepressants tested were unexpectedly effective against tumor cells. Vortioxetine proved to be the most effective antidepressant.
In the final step, researchers at the University Hospital Zurich tested vortioxetine in mice with glioblastoma. Vortioxetine also showed good efficacy in these trials, especially when used in combination with current standard treatment.
Vortioxetine is a readily available and low cost drug.
On September 30, 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved vortioxetine for the treatment of major depressive disorder in adults. If vortioxetine proves effective against glioblastoma, it would be the first time in decades that an active substance has been found to improve the treatment of glioblastoma.
“The great advantage of vortioxetine is that it is safe and cost-effective, and since the drug is already approved, it does not need to go through a complex approval process and may soon be added to the standard treatment for this deadly brain tumor,” says Michael Weller, professor at the University Hospital Zurich, director of the Department of Neurology and co-author of the study, according to EurekAlert.
He hopes that oncologists will be able to use it soon, but they warn patients and their relatives against obtaining vortioxetine on their own and taking it without medical supervision. It is not yet known whether the drug is effective in humans and what dose is needed to combat the tumor, which makes clinical trials necessary. Treatment with this drug without conducting the necessary studies would be risky and the results could not be predicted.
Snyder also cautions against rushing to use the antidepressant on glioblastomas: “So far, it has only been shown to be effective in cultured cells and in mice.”