Sci­en­tists find un­ex­pect­ed an­ti-can­cer ac­tiv­i­ty in range of non-on­col­o­gy drugs — study

As the sec­ond lead­ing cause of mor­tal­i­ty glob­al­ly, the lu­cra­tive field of can­cer treat­ment has elicit­ed a fren­zy of drug de­vel­op­ment and bil­lions in ven­ture fund­ing. But a new study sug­gests that can­cer-killing com­pounds may be lurk­ing in the ex­ist­ing ar­se­nal of non-on­col­o­gy med­i­cines.

By an­a­lyz­ing thou­sands of FDA-ap­proved drugs and com­pounds that have been proven safe in clin­i­cal tri­als, sci­en­tists at the Broad In­sti­tute of MIT and Har­vard and Dana-Far­ber Can­cer In­sti­tute found near­ly 50 com­pounds — in­clud­ing drugs for di­a­betes, in­flam­ma­tion, al­co­holism and even a treat­ment for arthri­tis in dogs — with pre­vi­ous­ly un­de­tect­ed an­ti-can­cer ac­tiv­i­ty.

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