SCI Rep: old trees bloom new flowers! Heart drugs can significantly improve the survival of children with aggressive brain tumors

July 18, 2019 / biourn / - researchers at the University of Nottingham found that the use of a heart drug can significantly improve the survival rate of children with ependymoma (a brain tumor) The findings, published in scientific reports, were led by experts from the University's School of medicine and life sciences Studies have shown that combination therapy with a drug commonly used for the treatment of cardiac hypertrophy can overcome chemotherapy resistance and improve the survival rate of more than one third of patients with ependymoma Photo source: ependymoma is the second most common malignant brain tumor in children They can occur at all ages, but children's results are worse than adults The survival rate of infants was the lowest, and the 5-year prognosis was only 42% - 55% Because of the success of chemotherapy in children with ependymoma, it is often considered that ependymoma is a tumor with chemical tolerance, because more than half of the tumors can not be cured by chemotherapy alone The study was led by Dr Beth Coyle of the University of Nottingham School of medicine and Dr Ian Kerr of the school of life sciences The doctoral student in charge of the study, durgagauri sabnis, is a recipient of the University of Nottingham Vice Chancellor's scholarship for excellence in research and the bfwg Foundation grant "We hope that by combining this repurposed drug with the current treatment, we can bring new hope for the long-term survival of patients with this devastating brain tumor," Dr Coyle said "In this study, the authors set out to determine the nature of this chemical resistance They found that the presence of ABCB1, a chemotherapeutic drug pump protein, was associated with a significantly poorer prognosis in patients receiving chemotherapy alone The tumor expressing ABCB1 has less response to chemotherapy and is more likely to be locally invasive Subsequently, the authors used a cardiac drug to inhibit the ABCB1 function of tumor cells taken from patients The heart drug prevents ABCB1 from pumping chemotherapy drugs out of tumor cells, making them more sensitive to chemotherapy and less likely to migrate ABCB1 is expressed in more than one-third of patients' tumors, and all patients are likely to benefit from the reuse of this cardiac drug in future clinical trials Reference: durgagauri H sabnis et al A role for ABCB1 in diagnosis, innovation and drug resistance in ependymoma, scientific reports (2019) Doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-46700-z