Summary: Researchers at UT Southwestern report medications used to treat arthritis and lung cancer may help in the battle against glioblastoma.

Source: UT Southwestern.

A new strategy for treating brain tumors may extend or save the lives of patients diagnosed with one of the deadliest forms of cancer, according to a study from UT Southwestern Medical Center.

The research demonstrates in mice that a combination of medications – traditionally used separately to treat lung cancer and arthritis – can destroy glioblastoma, a difficult-to-treat brain tumor that is lethal to most patients in little more than a year.

The combination of these medications disables two proteins responsible for helping the cancer cells survive, providing a therapy that UT Southwestern is working to fast-track for clinical use.This could be a groundbreaking treatment. If it works in patients, then it will be an important advance,” said Dr. Amyn Habib, a member of UT Southwestern’s Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute and the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The research published in Nature Neuroscience answers a decades-old question of why a treatment that disables a protein common in various cancers has been effective in some forms of lung and colon cancer but not in glioblastoma.

The protein, known as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), resides in the tumor cell’s membrane and has been a traditional target for fighting malignant tumors. Dr. Habib’s team found that when doctors use a medication to disable the receptor, a second protein is produced in the brain that takes over the receptor’s function to keep the cancer cell alive.