These two cancer drugs may help lower your risk of Alzheimer's disease, study shows
In a study published on Monday in the medical journal Cell, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, combed through more than 1,300 candidate drugs — from antipsychotics to antibiotics — for anything that could help alleviate the incurable condition.
Only 90 of those drugs targeted the brain cell genes thought to influence Alzheimer's, and of those only five showed evidence of actually reducing the risk of Alzheimer's in human patients.
The scientists then chose letrozole, designed to fight breast cancer, and irinotecan, intended for treating colon and lung cancer, to test on mice.
'We didn't expect cancer drugs to come up," study co-author Marina Sirota told NBC News.
In fact, the two drugs used in combination did appear to improve memory and brain function in aging mice who had begun to show signs of dementia.
That result still needs to be tested in humans, and the drugs may prove less effective in humans. Still, the finding is significant because pharmaceutical companies have so far struggled to develop purpose-built drugs for the disease.
"Developing a new drug can take hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars, on average take more than ten years," said study co-author Dr. Yadong Huang.
"For this repurposed drug, usually it just takes two or three years, and then you can go to the clinical trial and the cost is much, much lower.
"We still haven't generated or produced any very effective drugs that can really slow dramatically the cognitive decline," he added.
Over seven million Americans live with Alzheimer's disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association, including 1 in 9 people aged over 65.
The number is only likely to grow as the average age of the U.S. population continues to climb, with care costs for people with dementia projected to grow from $384 billion in 2025 to nearly $1 trillion by 2050.
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