Cancer drugs key to inflammation treatment, study shows

The drugs, known as CDK inhibitors, can destroy the inflammatory cells that cause the tissue damage and scarring that leads to organ failure and joint pain. These drugs trigger a process of cell ‘suicide’ in which the inflammatory cells destroy themselves before being removed by scavenger cells.

Researchers have spent years trying to induce this process. Now they have shown that CDK inhibitors are capable of instigating the process of cell suicide.

Significantly, laboratory tests now suggest that they also reduce inflammation in models of rheumatoid arthritis and a devastating, currently untreatable, lung disease called fibrosing alveolitis.

Professor Chris Haslett, head of the Queen’s Medical Research Institute at the University of Edinburgh, said that he expects the study to lead to trials of these drugs in human inflammatory diseases.

“This study offers new hope for patients with severe inflammatory diseases. Specific treatment for such conditions is poor, and the use of steroids is fraught with potential difficulties. We have adopted a different strategy by using non-biological treatments, but this study needs urgently to be translated into trials and we are now seeking major funding to research further how these drugs work,” Professor Haslett and his colleague, Professor Adriano Rossi, stated.