Swedish scientists reported in the American Cancer Society Journal of Natural Products that cardiac glycosides, which are a family of naturally derived drugs which are used to treat congestive heart failure and arrhythmia, show anti-tumor activity against colon cancer cells.
There is little known how these drugs work as potential anti-cancer agents. These scientists screened several of these glycosides in colon cancer cell lines, and they found that the drugs were all effective, to varying degrees, at killing the cancer cells. The sensitivity, however, was rather low when compared to that of other cancer cell types reported previously.
Several of the drugs also showed increased anticancer activity when combined with certain drugs used for standard chemotherapy. The findings suggest that these heart drugs may affect colon cancer outcome when used alone or combination with conventional chemotherapy drugs.
These drugs are found in the leaves of the oriental foxglove plant and contain digitoxin, a drug used to treat heart disease.
These are very early results and may trigger more research in this family of drugs for further development.
January 09, 2010 at 3:49 pm, Patsy White said:
Dr. Lenz:
I’m always writing you when there has been a downturn so I wanted to let you know we have had some good news. I wrote you about my husband being told that from CT scans he had a tumor in his liver. We were told that it was the colon cancer spread there.
I found a Dr. Slakey in New Orleans at Tulane who does Microwave Ablation. He recommended that we do a liver biopsy and a 3 way liver scan. We learned the great news Thursday that the 5 biopsies from all areas of his tumor tested negative for cancer. Dr. Slakey is pretty sure that it is not cancer but we will be doing a PET scan in the coming weeks to be positive there are no cancer cells.
While we were feeling hope about the liver, we were told his CEA went up 2 points in 2 weeks. We are still battling the lung mets and are going to try switching back and forth from Xeloda to 5FU since Xeloda causes his toe to be infected. Have you ever treated anyone with Tarceva with colon cancer lung mets when other chemo fails for lungs?
Thank you again and I just wanted to let you know there was some good news sometimes.
Thank you and Happy New Year.
Patsy
January 25, 2010 at 11:27 pm, Ginger Jacobs said:
I have searched the web for information on treating colorectal cancer with mets to the lungs and I have not been able to find anything. Please advise me on where to find specific information on available treatments and possible research trials.
January 29, 2010 at 9:18 pm, Charlie said:
Dear Dr. Lenz,
Just wanted to ask you, what is the latest on PERIFOSINE KRX-0401 by Keryx, AEterna Zentaris.
They have been talking lately about great results of this medicine.
http://www.dancewithshadows.com/pillscribe/oral-drug-perifosine-is-safe-to-treat-metastatic-colon-cancer-keryx-aeterna-zentaris/
Thank you