- Most cases of lung cancer diagnosed in Mexico are in an advanced stage.
- This neoplasia is considered the most frequent cause of death from tumors worldwide.
- A new combination of drugs proposed by Mexican specialists has shown increased efficacy in the treatment of patients with this tumor.
He lung cancer remains one of the most serious public health problems. In fact, as part of its rise, it has become the most frequent cause of death from tumors worldwide. For this reason, in addition to prevention, work is also being done on alternatives to provide support to patients.
According to the latest figures recorded by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in Mexico each year there are around eight thousand new cases of this neoplasia. One of the drawbacks is that most are diagnosed at an advanced stage, of which about 90 percent die.
Current treatments have lost efficacy
A phenomenon faced by patients undergoing treatment is the gradual loss of effectiveness of the drugs administered. Although the adaptation mechanisms of cancer cells to counteract the drugs are still not clear, scientists are looking for alternatives in order to offer new effective therapies.
An example is the work carried out in the laboratory of Francisco Javier Camacho Arroyo, from the Cinvestav Department of Pharmacology. Based on the combination of drugs that have circulated on the market, a new treatment strategy was investigated with promising results for patients with lung cancer.
In fact, the development was recognized with the IMPI Award for Mexican Innovationin the category of Innovative Women, since the majority of them were researchers who participated in the invention.
In accordance with Maria de Guadalupe Chavez Lopez, a Cinvestav graduate and one of the project participants, the repositioning of commercial drugs is a worldwide trend with good results for human health, by using products whose administration and recommended doses are approved in people. In this way, drugs can move faster through patient testing than completely new molecules.
Proposed drug combination
In the case of the proposal made at Cinvestav, the astemizolean antihistamine used in allergic rhinitis and conjunctivitis, as well as insect bites, in combination with an antineoplastic called gefitinibwhich is indicated for a very frequent type of lung cancer, but due to the loss of effectiveness, its use has been reduced.
The Cinvestav research group discovered that the combination of both drugs inhibits the proliferation of lung cancer cells and promotes their apoptosis more potently than when only one of the drugs is administered.
For example, it was found that, although each drug separately decreases the metabolic activity of cancer cells by 10 percent, the simultaneous use of both drugs (using a similar concentration) reduces that same activity by around 80 percent, María explained. Guadalupe Chavez Lopez.
In addition to the proven effectiveness of the combination, these are drugs that have been on sale for several years in Mexico and are relatively cheap, so their proposal to treat lung cancer can also be considered low-cost.
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