Saturday, October 2, 2010

Cancer drug imatinib may be used to treat Parkinson's Disease

Interesting research by Johns Hopkins scientists ( Parkinson's Disease: Excess of Special Protein Identified as Key to Symptoms and Possible New Target for Treatment with Widely Used Anti-Cancer Drug) shows that a widely used anti-cancer drug imatinib (currently marketed as Gleevec by Novartis) may be effective in controlling symptoms of Parkinson's Disease.

The interesting point is that a single drug is being used to treat different cancers, but now a cancer treating drug is also implicated in Parkinson's disease, which is a degenerative disorder of central nervous system. Of course, most cancers and Parkinson's disease are age related. Ageing as a disease needs to be widely accepted before all age related diseases can be cured.

Another example of multi use cancer drug under clinical trial is Ipilimumab by Bristol & Myers Squibb.

1 comment:

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