“Repurposing” off-patent drugs offers big hopes of new treatments
But governments need to give companies incentives to invest in them
TOWARDS THE end of 2014 a 66-year-old British man named Alistair had a seizure. A scan revealed shocking news. He had an inoperable brain tumour—a glioblastoma—that was likely to kill him in a few years. Soon afterwards, he read a newspaper article suggesting that a cocktail of cheap, everyday drugs, chosen for their anti-cancer effects, had helped a patient with the same disease. His doctors were unimpressed but said: “We can’t stop you.”
Four years on Alistair is still taking this drug regimen alongside the “standard-of-care” treatment. The drug cocktail is prescribed by Care Oncology, a private clinic in London, which recommends a statin (a cholesterol-lowering drug), metformin (used to treat type-2 diabetes), doxycycline (an antibiotic) and mebendazole (an anti-worming agent). These may sound radical, but are actually safe, cheap, generic medicines with evidence of some anti-cancer effects. Nonetheless, their labels do not say they treat glioblastoma—nor any other cancer for that matter.
This article appeared in the International section of the print edition under the headline "A higher purpose"
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