Current state and future perspective of drug repurposing in malignant glioma

Publication date: Available online 14 November 2019Source: Seminars in Cancer BiologyAuthor(s): Markus David Siegelin, Elisabeth Schneider, Mike-Andrew Westhoff, Christian Rainer Wirtz, Georg Karpel-MasslerAbstractMalignant gliomas are still extremely difficult to treat because complete surgical resection is biologically not feasible due to the invasive nature of the disease and the proximity of tumors to functionally sensitive areas. Moreover, adjuvant therapies are facing a strong therapeutic resistance since the central nervous system is a highly protected environment and the tumor cells display a vast intra-tumoral genetic and epigenetic variation. As a consequence, new therapeutics are urgently needed but the process of developing novel compounds that finally reach clinical application is highly time-consuming and expensive.Drug repurposing is an approach to facilitate and accelerate the discovery of new cancer treatments. In malignant glioma, like in other cancers, pre-existing physiological pathways that regulate cell growth, cell death or cell migration are dysregulated causing malignant transformation. A wide variety of drugs are clinically used to treat non-cancerous diseases interfering with these malignancy-associated pathways. Repurposed drugs have key advantages: They already have approval for clinical use by national regulatory authorities. Moreover, they are for the most part inexpensive and their side effect and safety profiles are well characterized.In this ...
Source: Seminars in Cancer Biology - Category: Cancer & Oncology Source Type: research