Drug Used to Treat Heart Problems Found to Also
Fight Colon Cancer
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The leaves of
the oriental foxglove plant contain digitoxin, a drug used to
treat heart disease. It is in a family of medications that now
show promise for fighting colon cancer. Photo from Wikimedia
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Cardiac glycosides, like digitoxin, are
naturally-derived drugs used to treat congestive heart failure and
abnormal heart rhythms
Dec. 16, 2009 – Senior citizens, always on guard
for heart and cancer threats, will appreciate the Oriental Foxglove
plant, which produces a drug named digitoxin. It is part of a family of
medications used to treat heart disease, which now appear to also fight
colon cancer.
Colon cancer is the third most common cancer in the
United States, with more than 150,000 cases diagnosed in the U.S. each
year.
Scientists from Sweden report on this finding in
the Journal of Natural Products, a publication of the American
Chemical Society.
Jenny Felth, Joachim Gullbo, and colleagues note
that cardiac glycosides are a family of naturally-derived drugs used to
treat congestive heart failure and abnormal heart rhythms.
Scientists
have suspected for some time, based on previous research, that these
heart drugs may have promise for fighting many different types of
cancer.
Despite this, knowledge on effects in colon cancer
or combination effects with other anti-cancer drugs has been lacking.
And, scientists know little about their potential anticancer effects and
have not tested these substances against colon cancer.
As part of a larger study to screen and identify
natural substances with activity against colon cancer, the scientists
picked several cardiac glycosides for further study.
They tested five of
these heart drugs against laboratory cultures of human colon cancer
cells and found that they were all effective, to varying degrees, at
killing the cancer cells.
The sensitivity, however, was rather low when
compared to that of other cancer cell types reported previously.
Several of the drugs also showed increased
anticancer activity when combined with certain drugs used for standard
chemotherapy.
The findings suggest that these heart drugs may
affect colon cancer outcome when used alone or in combination with
conventional chemotherapy drugs, they say.
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American Chemical Society
