Addiction, Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Pharmacology / 04.07.2016
At Lower Dose, Addiction Drug Naltrexone May Have Anti-Cancer Effects
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr Wai Liu
Senior Research Fellow
St George's University of London
London
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Naltrexone is a drug commonly used to wean addicts off alcohol and heroin, but clinical evidence has shown that when the drug is used at lower doses, patients would exhibit alter immunity. The symptoms that patients with a number of autoimmune diseases and those associated with chronic pain would ease significantly. Additionally, a number of reports showed patients with some forms of cancer would experience therapeutic benefit. Interestingly, the doses of the drug was crucial, and the non-conventional effects of naltrexone was only achieved at doses that were lower that what was conventionally used. We set about to understand why a drug could have such different effects when used at differing doses. Our results show that the genetic profile of the drug is subtly different at the two different doses, which helped us identify novel ways in which the drug could be used to induce an anticancer effect.
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