Arthritis Drug treats Blood Cancer

  Martin Zeidler says blood cancer sufferers could be treated with a simple arthritis drug. He is a leading scientist from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Biomedical Science.

   He and his colleagues have found that methotrexate (MTX) — a drug on the WHO list of essential medicines and commonly used to treat arthritis — works by directly inhibiting the molecular pathway responsible for causing the disease.

   Initial tests were carried out on fruit fly cells to screen for small molecules that modulate JAK/STAT signalling — a pathway whose mis-regulation is central to the development in humans of Myelo Proliferative Neoplasms (MPNs), the collective term for progressive blood cancers like Polycythemia Vera (PV).


   Current treatments do not slow the disease progression and provide little relief from symptoms. The team now hope to go on to a full clinical trial early next year.

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