It appears that antibiotics may help treat cancer in addition to standard therapy. Scientists found that clofazimine can help in severe cases of breast cancer. The drug itself is usually prescribed for completely different diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy.
RIA Novosti reports that during chemotherapy, clofazimine can slow down tumor growth and metastasis spreading. At the same time, the medication has very few side effects. The research was conducted by an international group of scientists from the Biomedicine School of Far Eastern Federal University, University of Lausanne, University of Geneva and the Geneva University Hospitals.
“The anti-leprosy drug, clofazimine, can effectively suppress Wnt signaling pathways in case of triple-negative breast cancer and helps to stop tumor cells from growing in mice,” commented Vladimir Katanayev, Head of the Natural Compound Pharmacology Lab at the Biomedicine School of Far Eastern Federal University.
For now, the scientists have tested the antibiotic drug on mice.
As previously reported by Invest Foresight, cancer is one of the three most common mortality causes in Russia along with heart attacks and strokes. Specifically, in 2017 70,569 patients were diagnosed with breast cancer.