A combination of two cancer drugs may provide a pathway to treat Alzheimer’s, according to a study published July 21 in Cell.
Researchers from the University of California San Francisco developed and applied a computational drug repurposing algorithm to 1,300 FDA-approved drugs or previously investigated compounds with the aim of identifying drugs that could potentially be repurposed.
Here are three notes from the study:
- Two drugs — the breast cancer drug letrozole, and the colon and lung cancer drug irinotecan — were identified as possible options as they target Alzheimer’s-related gene expression changes.
- When combined, the drugs seemed to slow or reverse Alzheimer’s disease symptoms in mice.
- “These results highlight the promise of cell-type-directed combination therapies in addressing multifactorial diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and lay the groundwork for precision medicine tailored to patient-specific transcriptomic and clinical profiles,” the study authors wrote.
Read the full study here.
