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An existing antidepressant drug could potentially be used to treat breast cancer, researchers at the Institute of Advanced Study in Science and Technology (IASST), an autonomous institute under the Department of Science & Technology (DST), said on Monday.
The team has been working to repurpose drugs to create better therapeutic approaches for the management of breast cancer -- the most common cancer in India.
It is difficult to develop novel, effective anticancer drugs because of high development costs, lengthy development periods, and the need for drug trials and regulatory approvals. Nonetheless, drug discovery by medication repurposing is a common practice among biomedical experts nowadays. The integrated network pharmacological studies led by the team pointed out that selegiline -- an antidepressant drug from a class of drugs called monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors -- has a substantial number of nodes in interactions with eleven genes that are closely related to different types of cancer.
Selegiline is also used to help control the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.
Six cancer cell lines were included in the study's initial comparative assessment of selegiline's effectiveness. It has been discovered that selegiline effectively eradicates triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and oestrogen and progesterone-positive breast cancer.
Through a method independent of reactive oxygen species (ROS), it can cause cell death in breast cancer cells, preventing breast cancer cells from spreading their tentacles to the entire neural networks of the body, indicating that this mechanism may contribute to selegiline-induced cell death.
The study, published in the journal Medical Oncology, could potentially facilitate future research in this field by biomedical scientists.
"This is the first study of its kind, and it's important for the field of cancer research. It merits more research in the near future in terms of an in vivo efficacy study, dose optimisation, contraindications, and related harmful side effects," the researchers said.
