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Anti-obesity drug can also treat cancer
By Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor - London Times


A DRUG used to combat obesity may also be effective in slowing prostate cancer, research has shown.
Orlistat, sold by Roche under the brand name Xenical, works by targeting an enzyme that helps to absorb fat in the diet. But it also inhibits another enzyme, fatty acid synthase, which converts dietary carbohydrate to fat, and scientists in the US have found that this enzyme encourages prostatic tumours to grow.

When scientists tested orlistat in mice with prostate cancer, they found that it checked tumour growth. Further experiments showed that it had no impact on normal prostate cells and produced no side-effects in the mice.

Jeffrey Smith, who led the research at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, California, said: “This is a big advance in the sense that we have an approved drug — approved for one indication — that has another target and another potential disease indication, prostate cancer.”

The scientists, whose results have been published in Cancer Research, used a screening method based on the human genome to compile a comprehensive profile of a potential drug’s activities.

The screening method, activity-based proteomics, represents a leap forward in drug research. Within weeks, Dr Smith linked excessive fatty acid synthase activity with flawed metabolism in cancer cells, and identified orlistat as its inhibitor.

Orlistat was developed as an inhibitor of pancreatic lipase, an enzyme that belongs to the same family as fatty acid synthase.

Additional screening of breast cancer and colon cancer cells revealed that fatty acid synthase activity is increased in those tumours, too, suggesting that orlistat or a similar new drug might also be able to inhibit those cancers.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1040237,00.html