Anti-cancer drug could cure Parkinson’s disease

Researchers from several Catalan research centers have discovered the potential of the anti-cancer drug Rucaparib to treat Parkinson’s disease thanks to the biochemical changes these products produce in the body.

This is stated in a study published in the journal. Cell chemical biology researchers Albert A. Antolin from the Oncobell program of the Bellvitge Institute of Biomedical Research in Barcelona and ProCure of the Catalan Institute of Oncology and Amadeu Llebaria from the Institute of Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia. The scientists begin by explaining that once drugs enter the body, in the body, in addition to performing their therapeutic function , they are biochemically transformed by a metabolic mechanism, and this process facilitates their elimination. This biotransformation leads to the gradual disappearance of the drug, which is converted into its metabolites, which, in turn, can reach high concentrations in the body and also exhibit biological activity that may differ from the original. “That is, metabolites and the drug coexist in the body and can cause effects that differ from individual ones,” the researchers note. Rucaparib is a drug used in chemotherapy for ovarian cancer, breast cancer and, more recently, breast cancer. prostate and its metabolite. The scientific study analyzed the relationship between the drug and the M324 molecule, demonstrating that rucaparib and its metabolite have differential activity and act synergistically in certain prostate cancer cell lines. Likewise, “M324 reduces the accumulation of the protein alpha-synuclein in neurons obtained from patients with Parkinson’s disease, a disease in which neurons do not produce enough of the neurotransmitter.”