Repurposed drug brings new hope for breast cancer patients
Mays Cancer Center Annual Report
Mays Cancer Center scientists are testing whether medications for conditions unrelated to cancer might contribute to successful outcomes for breast cancer patients.
“The patient is always the focus of the work being done in both the lab and the clinic, as it should be. Curing cancer in a lab is great, but it’s not the ultimate goal. Curing cancer in patients is.”
– Virginia G. Kaklamani, MD, professor of medicine and leader of the breast oncology program at Mays Cancer Center
Could a drug prescribed for transplant recipients also help some women beat breast cancer? Impressive new findings point to this possibility, according to research conducted at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
Kimi Kong, PhD, and Robert Hromas, MD, FACP, who made the observations, are collaborating with Virginia Kaklamani, MD, DSc, to offer a clinical trial of the drug cyclosporin at the Mays Cancer Center.
Kong, associate professor of medicine, and Hromas, acting president of UT Health San Antonio, found that cyclosporin kills a specific type of cancer cell. They immediately contacted Kaklamani, leader of the Breast Oncology Program at the Mays Cancer Center.
In the cyclosporin study, the cancer center’s patient care and scientific discovery missions are powerfully fused. The hope is to discover another treatment option to help the hundreds of thousands of individuals — predominantly women — who are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the U.S., including more than 20,000 new cases annually in Texas.
Cyclosporin has a history of safety in humans dating back four decades. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug in 1983 to prevent the rejection of transplanted organs. Kaklamani’s challenge is to define the best use of this drug in a new population of patients.
As findings are made by Kong, Hromas and the research team, they are communicated to Kaklamani and the clinical team at the Mays Cancer Center.
Over the next several years, Kaklamani will study cyclosporin in women newly diagnosed with one type of inherited breast cancer who have not yet received any treatment.
“We know the dose for transplant patients, but we are not using the drug for transplantation,” she said. “Should we be using the same dose for our cancer patients? This study will answer many questions.”
The clinical trial is supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Mays Cancer Center.
“The patient is always the focus of the work being done in both the lab and the clinic, as it should be,” Kaklamani said. “Curing cancer in a lab is great, but it’s not the ultimate goal. Curing cancer in patients is.”
