In a recent study conducted at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, it was found that statins moonlight as both cholesterol level lowering and anticancer drugs! (link to the paper is mentioned below (1)). Previous epidemiological evidence shows how patients who had taken statin drugs for a substantial amount of time, had less aggressive cancers when compared to those who didn’t.
Jiao et al. identified and screened about 2500 drugs based on their ability to kill cells that had been genetically engineered to have a PTEN (a tumor suppressing gene) mutation. Pitavastatin was able to kill almost all of the mutated cells and very few normal cells.
Statins work as cholesterol lowering drugs by blocking liver enzymes that are intended to make cholesterol. However, it also stops the production of GGPP (geranylgeranylpyrophosphate) -an enzyme whose absence results in cancer cell death and renders them immotile. The use of fluorescent tags allowed the team of scientists to visualize the cell’s inability to take up vital proteins post statin staining.
Statin drugs came to the rescue once again, reducing hearing loss in mice treated with cisplatin, a chemotherapeutic drug for cancer. Cisplatin is highly effective in killing cancer cells, but one of the side effects is permanent hearing loss caused by its toxicity to sensory cells of the inner ear. This study conducted by Fernandez et al. (link to the paper is mentioned below (2)) showed that Lovastatin was able to enhance production of two protective heat shock proteins, resulting in reduced hearing loss. Hence, there is great potential for use of statin and cisplatin in combination for better treatment of cancers.
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