Statins may help treat cancer
While a prescription to buy Canadian Lipitor can help lower cholesterol levels, scientists are continuing to find new uses for this drug and other statins.
While a prescription to buy Canadian Lipitor can help lower cholesterol levels, scientists are continuing to find new uses for this drug and other statins. Researchers from Columbia University recently discovered that these medications' cholesterol-reducing properties may have uses in cancer treatment.
One of the most common genes connected to cancer development is p53. A functional gene helps suppress the formation of tumors, but a mutated version of p53 may drive the growth of aggressive malignancies.
In order to understand why such a mutation would have this effect, the researchers created an artificial system mimicking the human breast in the laboratory. Cells with a p53 mutation grew uncontrollably, which scientists discovered to be the result of changes in the same cholesterol-building pathway targeted by statins.
This observation was supported by another experiment in which the cancer cells stopped growing or died after being treated with statins, as published in the journal Cell.
"There are great implications, but nothing clinical yet. Perhaps one could do a clinical trial, and that may support these findings, or it may be more complicated," said researcher Carol Prives.
The American Cancer Society projects more than 1.6 million newly diagnosed cases of cancer in the U.S. for 2012.
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