Adding the antimalarial drug chloroquine to the treatment regimen of three brain cancer patients successfully stabilized the disease after the cancer had become resistant to chemotherapy and targeted treatments, according to a new study published in eLife.
In the treatment-resistant cancer, researchers identified a BRAFV600E mutation. This mutation makes the cancer especially dependent on autophagy — the process by which unnecessary cellular components are used to make energy or proteins that can be used to protect against harmful toxins. By adding chloroquine — known to inhibit the autophagy process — to the patients' treatment regimen, tumor susceptibility to therapies returned and the cancer stabilized.
"In summary, pre-clinical and clinical experience invariably shows that tumor cells rapidly evolve ways around inhibition of mutated kinase pathways like the RAF pathway targeted here. However, based on our results, we hypothesize that by targeting an entirely different cellular process, i.e. autophagy, upon which these same tumor cells rely, it may be feasible to overcome such resistance and thus re-establish effective tumor control... it should be feasible to quickly test this hypothesis in clinical trials," wrote the study's authors.
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