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Obesity Drugs May Fight Cancer

Many scientific advances start with serendipity. Scientists at Wake Forest University have made a surprising discovery - an obesity drug can kill cancer cells. The researchers are now using the findings to develop more effective cancer drugs.

This study, published in the online version of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology is the first to report that the drug oralist,Xenical® or Alli® interacts and binds with a protein found in tumor cells causing cell death. The project started when Steven Kridel, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Cancer Biology, analyzed prostate cancer cells to see which enzymes were expressed at high levels in the hope of developing treatments that would inhibit those enzymes and stop tumor growth.

What they found according to Kridel is that, "a protein known as fatty acid synthase is expressed at high levels in prostate tumor cells, and is fairly absent in normal cells...This makes an exciting treatment target because theoretically you don't have to worry about harming nearby healthy tissue."

While oralist has killed cancer cells in the lab, it can't be used as a cancer treatment, because in humans, it is designed to act only in the digestive tract. According to W. Todd Lowther, Ph.D., another researcher on the project , the goal is to "develop an orlistat-like drug that can get into the bloodstream and go to the site of a tumor."

They are working with a dozen possibilities to find the one that works best. The drug will be tested on animals, and later cancer patients.
While what they are working on is a cancer treatment, as fatty acid synthase is also found in fat cells, it's possible that, "You might have the same drug for treating a cancer patient as an obese patient," said Lowther.

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