New combinations and formulations of older therapies promise to treat bowel cancer

A team of researchers at the University of Auckland has found that combining old drugs with new methods holds promise for treating bowel cancer
.

Lead researcher Professor Peter Shepard said: "Despite advances in the treatment of this disease in recent years, developing new drugs is expensive and time-consuming
.
"As a possible solution to this problem, our team has been investigating whether using old drugs with new methods can provide a faster and cheaper way to
treat this disease.
"

Scientists have studied several anti-cancer drugs
that are about to lose their patents.
In their lab study, when they combined the two such drugs, they found that the overall effectiveness of treating bowel cancer or colorectal cancer was greatly improved
.

Shepard said the development of our understanding of how cancer works paved the way
for this research.

"In recent years, research has led to a rapid increase
in our understanding of how colorectal cancer develops.
In particular, some subtypes of the disease rely on the development of small blood vessels and proteins
called BRAF and catenin.

"The team identified existing drugs against these drugs and investigated the possibility that
combining them might have a powerful anti-cancer effect.
"

Research by the lab at the University of Auckland shows that the prospects for two older drugs are promising
.
One is the anti-cancer drug axitinib
.
The other is pyrrole, a low-cost drug that was developed in the '60s to treat filariasis, and researchers believe it could be reformulated for cancer treatment
.
In one set of studies, researchers found that the efficacy of vemurafenib, another older drug that targets BRAF, could be greatly enhanced
by the addition of axitinib.
The principle of action of axitinib is to reduce the growth
of small blood vessels.

Both drugs are used to treat other types of cancer in other cases, Shepherd said, and their patents will soon lapse, so the cost of using them in treatment will be greatly reduced
.

In a second set of studies, the team found evidence that
pyrazine (targeted-catenin) also improves the efficacy of vemurafenib.

Dr Khanh Tran, who conducted most of the experiments, said: "This work shows that existing drugs may be used to treat this type of cancer, which could significantly reduce the cost of
this treatment.
"

"Because the drugs we use are already being used for other purposes, this makes it easier to conduct clinical trials to see how our findings can actually translate to improving outcomes
for patients with this disease," Tran said.

The Human Rights Council provided $1.
2 million over three years for the study, and the Bowel Cancer Foundation provided another $150,000
.

Next, the researchers plan to conduct a randomized controlled clinical trial
.

Journal Reference:

1. Khanh B.
   Tran, Sharada V.
   Kolekar, Qian Wang, Jen-Hsing Shih, Christina M.
   Buchanan, Sanjeev Deva, Peter R.
   Shepherd.
   Response to BRAF targeted therapy is enhanced by co-targeting VEGFRs or WNT/β -Catenin signaling in BRAF-mutant colorectal cancer models.
   Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, 2022; DOI: 10.
   1158/1535-7163.
   MCT-21-0941