Cholesterol drug prevents growth of cells in lab.(lovastatin (Zocor) may help prevent cancer cell growth)

2003 MAY 1 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Statin drugs used to lower cholesterol may also help prevent development of breast cancer, say researchers who studied the drugs in laboratory cell cultures.

The investigators, from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, found that a side effect of drugs such as lovastatin and Zocor is to allow body cells to maintain high levels of proteins that stop cancer cells from growing.

Their findings were published in the Proceedings for the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.

"We have found out how a well-known and widely used class of drugs exhibits anticancer activities, and that's an exciting finding," said the lead investigator, Ekem Efuet, a postdoctoral researcher working in the lab of Khandan Keyomarsi, PhD, associate professor in experimental radiation oncology.

Additionally, the researchers found that the biological mechanism used by statin drugs to prevent cancer growth may also be the same one used by experimental farnesyl transferase inhibitors now being clinically tested as a cancer treatment. "We think these experimental agents are targeting the protein degradative pathway, the same way that the statins do," said Keyomarsi.

Most of the dose of statin drugs that patients take is converted from its inactive to active form in the liver and used to prevent the synthesis of cholesterol. ...