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- Can We Use Antiepileptic Drugs to Treat Cancer?
Can We Use Antiepileptic Drugs to Treat Cancer?
Dr Will Brackenbury
25 September 2015
5.40pm-6pmYork Medical Society (map)
FREE admission
No booking requiredWheelchair accessible
(through garden)
Event details
Cancers often spread to distant sites in the body to form secondary tumours. This process is called metastasis. In order to metastasise, cancer cells need to invade through surrounding tissue. Metastasis is rarely curable. If we could slow the spread of cancer cells, we might be able to reduce metastasis. Sodium channels are drug targets for the treatment of epilepsy. Sodium channels are also present in cancer cells, where they regulate invasion. We have found that the antiepileptic drug phenytoin reduces invasion. Thus, sodium channels might be useful targets for inhibiting metastasis. We asked the question: do cancer patients who are taking antiepileptic drugs live longer than cancer patients not taking these drugs? Surprisingly, we found that antiepileptic drugs reduced survival in cancer patients. We now need to know why the beneficial effect of these drugs seen in the lab is not reflected in the data from patients. One possible explanation that we are exploring is that most of the cancer patients taking these drugs will also have epilepsy and this might reduce their survival. In addition, the dose and timing of antiepileptic drugs may be important for them to have a beneficial effect in cancer patients.
