According to discovery by scientists at the University of Edinburgh, providing relief to patients suffering from inflammatory conditions such as chronic diseases of the joints, lungs, and other organs may be a possibility with specific drugs that have already been tested as cancer treatment options.
These drugs can dramatically reduce tissue inflammation as per a new study in the Nature Medicine journal.
From Sciencedaily.com:
The Edinburgh scientists have spent years devising ways of inducing apoptosis in specific inflammatory cells while, in parallel, driving macrophages to clear the resultant apoptotic cells more rapidly. Now they have shown that CDK inhibitors, like Roscovitine — which is already being tested in human cancer – are capable of inducing neutrophil apoptosis ‘in the test-tube’. Significantly, laboratory tests now suggest that they also reduce inflammation in models of rheumatoid arthritis and a devastating, currently untreatable, lung disease called fibrosing alveolitis.
Professor Chris Haslett, Head of the Queen’s Medical Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh, expects the study to lead to trials of these drugs in human inflammatory diseases. Professors Adriano Rossi and Haslett, who have led this new study with other colleagues from the QMRI, said: “This study offers new hope for patients with severe inflammatory diseases. Specific treatment for such conditions is poor, and the use of steroids is fraught with potential difficulties. We have adopted a different strategy by using non-biological treatments, but this study needs urgently to be translated into trials and we are now seeking major funding to research further how these drugs work.”
Specific non-biological drugs, like CDK inhibitors, possess the capability for knocking out the inflammatory cells that can cause tissue damage and scarring resulting in joint pain and organ failure, as per the researchers.
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