Breakthrough as common drug ‘shrinks fatal and aggressive brain tumours’ – raising hopes of a cure

A CHEAP drug that’s already on the market could be effective against deadly brain tumours, scientists say.

Glioblastomas are aggressive and fast-growing brain tumours affecting around 3,200 Brits a year that currently have no cure.

Patients’ life expectancy can be extended through operations, radiation or chemotherapy, but people only tend to live 12 to 18 months after being diagnosed with the cancer.

Only a fourth of glioblastoma patients survive more than a year after their diagnosis, The Brain Tumour Charity says.

Finding drugs that can combat brain tumours effectively is difficult, as many cancer drugs often can’t cross the blood-brain barrier.

This is tightly-locked layer of cells that line blood vessels in the brain, which filters out germs and harmful substances that could cause damage to the organ.

As a result, many drugs aren’t able to bypass this protective layer to reach the brain and eliminate tumours.

However, antidepressants can sneak through the barrier to get to the brain.

Researchers at ETH Zurich zeroed in an inexpensive antidepressant that’s already on the market, called vortioxetine.

In the UK, it’s known by the name Brintellix or Lundbeck, as it recommended for adults in a major depressive episode that hasn’t been eased by two other antidepressants.

Scientists used a special screening platform developed at the university that tests how active substances effects living cells from human cancer tissue, with the help of imaging techniques and computer analysis.

Their study – published in Nature Medicine – focused on neuroactive substances that cross the blood-brain barrier, such as antidepressants, Parkinson’s medication and antipsychotics.

In total, the research team tested up to 130 different drugs on tumour tissue from 40 cancer patients who had recently undergone surgery at the University Hospital Zurich.

Some, but not all, of the antidepressants tested were unexpectedly effective against the tumour cells – and vortioxetine proved to be the most effective.

Researchers at the University Hospital Zurich also tested vortioxetine on mice with a glioblastoma.

The drug also showed “good efficacy” these trials, especially in combination with the current standard treatments for glioblastoma – which include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation.

Professor Berend Snijder, who led the study, said: “We started with this terrible tumour and found existing drugs that fight against it.

“We show how and why they work, and soon we’ll be able to test them on patients.” 

Co-author Michael Weller, a professor and director of the Department of Neurologyat the University Hospital Zurich, said: “The advantage of vortioxetine is that it is safe and very cost-effective.

“As the drug has already been approved, it doesn’t have to undergo a complex approval procedure and could soon supplement the standard therapy for this deadly brain tumour.”

He hopes that oncologists will be able to use it soon to treat cancer.

But he stressed that cancer patients and their relatives shouldn’t obtain vortioxetine themselves and take it without the supervision of their doctor – so far, its effect on cancer has only been tested on cells and mice.

“We don’t yet know whether the drug works in humans and what dose is required to combat the tumour, which is why clinical trials are necessary,” Prof Weller said.

“Self-medicating would be an incalculable risk.”

The research team is is now preparing two new clinical trials.

In one, glioblastoma patients will be treated with vortioxetine alongside standard treatments.

In the second, patients will receive a personalised drug selection, which the researchers will determine using the pharmacoscopy platform.

Should vortioxetine prove effective in humans, this will be the first time in recent decades that an active substance has been found to improve the treatment of glioblastoma, researchers said.