Anti-asthma drug offers new hope against pancreatic cancer. The drug budesonide, widely used to treat respiratory disease, has shown “the surprising ability to counteract the proliferation of tumor cells of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most common form of pancreatic cancer”. This was discovered by an international team led by scientists from the Institute of Genetics and Biophysics ‘A. Buzzati-Traverso’ of the National Research Council of Naples (CNR-IGB), together with colleagues from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, the Instituto de Investigaciones Biomedicas Sols-Morreale in Madrid, Spain, and the University of Tennessee in the USA. The results are published in the ‘Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research’ (Springer Nature group).
Why is there a lower incidence of pancreatic cancer among asthmatic patients? This is the question that guided the researchers in their work, funded by the Airc Foundation for Cancer Research and the Ministry of University and Research. “We focused on the inverse correlation that, according to statistical data, sees a negative association between asthmatic patients undergoing long-term therapy and the frequency of pancreatic cancer,” explains Gabriella Minchiotti of the Cnr-Igb, coordinator of the study.
“We have thus discovered – he continues – that budesonide, a glucocorticoid drug already on the market for the treatment of asthma, is capable of limiting the most aggressive characteristics of human pancreatic cancer cellssuch as the ability to proliferate, migrate and invade other tissues and organs, which are the basis of the dissemination of metastases. In experiments with cells in culture and laboratory animals, we have shown that budesonide stops the growth of pancreatic cancer cells by modifying their metabolism and interfering in particular with the changes necessary for tumor progression”.
“The results obtained – highlights Cristina D’Aniello of Cnr-Igb, corresponding co-author of the article – suggest a possible use of budesonide also in preventive therapyor as an adjuvant in the treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.”
In addition to being one of the most frequent forms of pancreatic cancer, Pdac is also particularly aggressive, as underlined by Cnr and Vanvitelli University. In 2023, approximately 14,800 new diagnoses were estimated in Italy, according to data from the Aiom-Airtum report ‘The numbers of cancer in Italy’. Being a tumor that is often resistant to traditional therapies, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, The estimated 5-year survival rate after diagnosis is less than 12%Furthermore, there are no effective screening methods for this neoplasm, so at the time of diagnosis the tumor has often already spread throughout the body, making any type of intervention and therapy difficult.
For budesonide, what is now being considered is what “in medical-scientific jargon is called ‘repositioning’, since it is used in the case of drugs already used for certain therapeutic indications and effective in the treatment of pathologies other than those for which they were originally approved”, specifies D’Aniello (Cnr-Igb). “Furthermore – he concludes – the study could open new frontiers for the development of therapies in the fight against this type of tumor, with a saving of time and costs”.
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