Although doctors acknowledge that arsenic is a poisonous substance, they have been using arsenic trioxide to treat patients who have acute promyelocytic leukemia. Current findings demonstrate that the poison may be beneficial for patients who have other types of cancer.
Philip Beachy, Jynho Kim, and the rest of their research team at Stanford University tested the effect of arsenic trioxide in cultured cells and in laboratory mice with medulloblastoma, a highly malignant brain tumor. Past research showed that some cancers were linked to a malfunction in a critical cellular signaling cascade known as the Hedgehog pathway. This pathway became overly active in each of these diseases. In their experiment, the researchers discovered that low levels of arsenic trioxide blocked one of the last steps of the pathway. Consequently, the compound eventually either hindered or halted tumor growth in the mice.
In addition, by combining the application of arsenic trioxide with other Hedgehog pathway inhibitors, the scientists believed that this treatment combination could be extremely beneficial for patients with these cancers. "Arsenic might be especially effective for treating some types of cancers in combination with other drugs that act at different levels of the Hedgehog pathway," Beachy said. In their study, he and his colleagues noticed that combining the compound with cyclopamine, an inhibitor that acts near the beginning of the cascade, was more effective in blocking the pathway in cultured cells.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has already approved the usage of arsenic trioxide in humans. As a result, patients can participate in clinical trials of this treatment. Despite the negative side effects that may result due to arsenic exposure, these cancer patients may now have another option in their battles against their diseases.
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