DFMO drug may be used to cure pediatric nerve cancer: study

United states, January 21, 2009- The researchers claim that an anti cancerdefine drug which was banned earlier- on the account of being excessively toxic- may be used in small doses to treat lethal pediatric nerve cancer successfully.

The drug called a-difluoromethylornithine or DFMO is an enzyme-activated, irreversible inhibitor of ornithine decarboxylase and is the first enzyme in polyamine synthesis. It was developed 20 years ago and scientists thought that they would be able to use it for treating hyperproliferative diseases like cancerdefine.

Later, in clinical chemoprevention trials, it was noticed that this drug may have some side effects on the patients and subsequently, it was shelved.

In the study, the drug was tested on animals. The researchers observed that the drug had the ability to effectively halt the spread of neuroblastoma or the pediatric nerve cancer.

Neuroblastoma is a common extra-cranial form of cancer. This form of cancer attacks the nervous system of the victim and destroys it. In fact, 15 percent of all pediatric cancer deaths are caused by neuroblastoma. Neuroblastoma is more common in infants and children.

In a press release, John Cleveland, chair of the Scripps Florida department of cancer biology (and whose laboratory conducted the study), made a statement, "The drug, which was developed as a cancer therapy and later shelved because of toxicity concerns, has been around since the 1970s."

"But over the past five years, it has undergone a rebirth as a chemoprevention agent, first showing efficacy in animal models of human cancer and, more recently, in human prostate and colondefine cancer. Our study shows that it likely works in a large cast of tumors, even those having poor prognosisdefine, like high-risk neuroblastoma," he added.

The researchers studied the effect of DFMO on a protein called ornithine decarboxylase (Odc) that is responsible for enhancing the growth of cancer cells. Patients with neuroblastoma have a high percentage of ornithine decarboxylase (Odc). Researchers used DFMO to treat neuroblastoma in genetically altered mice.

As per Cleveland, when DFMO was administered to the mice with cancer for an average period of time in low doses, it was noted that the drug efficiently worked to thwart the cancer growth.

The study findings were published in January 15 issue of Cancer Research.