Anti-cancer drug opens new way to treat Parkinson’s disease

Researchers from several Catalan scientific centers have discovered anti-cancer drug Rucaparib, potential in the body to treat Parkinson’s disease due to the biochemical changes these products leave in the body.

Here’s how they explain it in The study was published in the journal Cell Chemical Biology. researchers Albert A. Antolin from the Oncobell program of the Bellvitge Institute of Biomedical Research (IDIBELL) in Barcelona and ProCure of the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO), and Amadeu Llebaria from the Institute of Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia (IQAC-CSIC).

Scientists begin by explaining that once drugs enter the body, in addition to performing their therapeutic function, they are biochemically transformed through a metabolic mechanism, a process that 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 that of the parent drug.

“That is, metabolites and the drug coexist in the bodyand may cause effects different from those obtained with the individual molecules,” they note.

Rucaparib Drug

This is the case with rucaparib, a drug used in chemotherapy for ovarian, breast and, more recently, prostate cancer, and its metabolite, the molecule M324.

A scientific study analyzed the relationship between rucaparib and M324 and showed that the drug and its metabolite have differential activity and act synergistically in certain prostate cancer cell lines.

In the same way, and this is what they emphasize most of all, “surprisingly, M324 reduces the accumulation of α-synuclein protein. (main component of Lewy bodies), in neurons obtained from patients with Parkinson’s diseasea neurodegenerative disease characterized by a movement disorder in which neurons do not produce enough of the neurotransmitter dopamine.”

Additionally, they explain that “the fact that M324 is able to reduce the abnormal accumulation of alpha-synuclein in neurons derived from stem cells from a patient with Parkinson’s disease highlights the therapeutic potential of this metabolite and its possible pharmacological application for the treatment of this neurodegenerative disease.” disease.

The team notes that, going beyond the specific case, this discovery points to a new conceptual perspective in pharmacology: “one that views drug metabolism not as an unwanted process that destroys and removes a therapeutic molecule from the body, but rather as one that could would have potential benefits from a therapeutic point of view.

For this reason, they say, it is important to characterize the activity of drug metabolites that enter the body after ingestion “to comprehensively understand their clinical response and apply it to precision medicine.”