Antidepressant as a novel therapy against blood cancer

Leukemia: psychiatric drug for blood cancer

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is one of the most common blood cancers in this country. Although the chances of recovery have improved significantly in recent years, resistance to this form of blood cancer remains an urgent problem. An antidepressant could help here, as German researchers have found.

Men are more often affected

Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), with 3.5 new diagnoses per 100,000 inhabitants a year, is a rare disease, but the most common form of acute leukemia in Germany. Men are a little more affected than women. "In addition to chemotherapy AML is often additionally performed in a stem cell and bone marrow transplantation. Researchers from Frankfurt now report that a psychiatric drug for this cancer could also be used.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is primarily a disease of elderly patients. Researchers have now discovered that an antidepressant drug could help treat this blood cancer. (Image: psdesign1 / fotolia.com)

If left untreated, the disease will be fatal within a few weeks

This disease, which is caused by malignant genetic changes in the bone marrow, affects mainly older patients - half of the patients are over 70 years old.

Patients often experience symptoms such as severe pallor, fatigue, discomfort, increased susceptibility to infections, bleeding, fever, loss of appetite, weight loss, limited performance, and dizziness.

However, some patients have little discomfort and leukemia is only detected by chance diagnosis.

But: "AML is a serious illness that, if left untreated, leads to death within a few weeks", writes the "Kompetenznetz Leukämie".

"That's why it's so important to start therapy right after the diagnosis. The most important part of the treatment is the chemotherapy with an adjunctive therapy to treat the side effects, "the experts added.

In some cases, bone marrow transplantation can occur. Radiotherapy plays a minor role in AML.

However, it is still being researched on therapeutic options for blood cancer. For example, US researchers reported that high-dose vitamin C infusions could help with leukemia. And other scientists from the US developed a new immunotherapy for blood cancer.

German experts have now gained new insights into the treatment of this type of cancer.

Resistances remain an urgent problem

Despite improved therapies, resistance to acute myeloid leukemia (AML) remains an urgent problem, and new drugs are urgently needed.

As reported in a report from the Frankfurt University Hospital, those affected have an increased proliferation of immature cells in the bone marrow, which can no longer mature into normal blood cells.

A central goal of the cancer researchers is therefore to let leukemia cells ripen again and thus to cure the disease. In the maturation of blood cells, so-called epigenetic factors such as the enzyme lysine-specific demethylase 1 (LSD1) play an important role.

LSD1 influences the packaging of the DNA and thus changes the reading of crucial genes. It has been known for some years that LSD1 inhibitors can induce the maturation of leukemia cells, especially when combined with the vitamin A derivative ATRA.

However, why this therapy only affects certain forms of AML has remained unclear for a long time.

Positive results with antidepressant

A team around Dr. Tobias Berg from the University Hospital Frankfurt and his colleagues from the University Hospital Freiburg have now achieved great success in elucidating the effects of LSD1 inhibitors.

In the paper published in the journal "Leukemia", the researchers showed that blocking the regulator LSD1 with drugs increases the activity of certain gene regulatory factors that are important for the maturation of the cells.

Mouse leukemia cells ripened through treatment to cells that resemble normal blood cells. In addition, the research team discovered that only certain LSD1 inhibitors have this effect:

The best effect observed the scientists with chemical derivatives of tranylcypromine (TCP). TCP itself is already approved as a psychiatric treatment for depression and also blocks LSD1.

Effectiveness of the drug in humans is being investigated

Whether the drug is also effective and well tolerated in AML patients is being investigated in the TRANSATRA study.

"The new findings of our current work are very valuable for clinical development and will now feed into the TRANSATRA clinical trial. So, hopefully, we will be able to predict in the future which patients will respond to the therapy, "Dr. Tobias Berg.

The approach of the TRANSATRA study is to combine the LSD1 inhibitor TCP with ATRA and low-dose chemotherapy.

In the meantime phase I could be finished. Now more participants are being sought to test the effectiveness of the drug in humans. (Ad)