Found: 49 non-cancer drugs that can kill cancer cells
A new screening approach enables rapid testing of existing drugs on hundreds of cancer cell lines
US researchers, who tested the cancer-fighting properties of more than 4500 non-cancer drugs, have found almost 50 that show at least some cancer-killing ability in the lab.
Published in Nature Cancer, the work is the largest yet to use the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Broad Institute Drug Repurposing Hub, a collection of samples of more than 6000 drugs and compounds that are either approved by the US FDA or have gone through early-stage clinical trials proving they are safe in people.
The investigators tested the drugs on more than 550 different cancer cell lines.
Earlier efforts at this kind of discovery have been painstaking because researchers had to grow cell lines one at a time and test each drug individually.
