{"id":218651,"date":"2025-07-24T16:08:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T21:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/can-cancer-drugs-cure-alzheimers"},"modified":"2025-07-24T16:08:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T21:08:16","slug":"can-cancer-drugs-cure-alzheimers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/can-cancer-drugs-cure-alzheimers","title":{"rendered":"Can cancer drugs cure Alzheimer\u2019s?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/can-cancer-drugs-cure-alzheimers2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The team took publicly available data from three studies of the Alzheimer\u2019s brain that measured single-cell gene expression in brain cells from deceased donors with or without Alzheimer\u2019s disease. They used this data to produce gene expression signatures for Alzheimer\u2019s disease in neurons and glia.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers compared these signatures with those found in the Connectivity Map, a database of results from testing the effects of thousands of drugs on gene expression in human cells.<\/p>\n<p>Out of 1,300 drugs, 86 reversed the Alzheimer\u2019s disease gene expression signature in one cell type, and 25 reversed the signature in several cell types in the brain. But just 10 had already been approved by the FDA for use in humans.<\/p>\n<p>Poring through records housed in the UC Health Data Warehouse, which includes anonymized health information on 1.4 million people over the age of 65, the group found that several of these drugs seemed to have reduced the risk of developing Alzheimer\u2019s disease over time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThanks to all these existing data sources, we went from 1,300 drugs, to 86, to 10, to just 5,\u201d said the lead author of the paper.<\/p>\n<p>The authors chose 2 cancer drugs out of the top 5 drug candidates for laboratory testing. They predicted one drug, letrozole, would remedy Alzheimer\u2019s in neurons; and another, irinotecan, would help glia. Letrozole is usually used to treat breast cancer; irinotecan is usually used to treat colon and lung cancer.<\/p>\n<p>The team used a mouse model of aggressive Alzheimer\u2019s disease with multiple disease-related mutations. As the mice aged, symptoms resembling Alzheimer\u2019s emerged, and they were treated with one or both drugs.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/can-cancer-drugs-cure-alzheimers\">Continue reading \u201cCan cancer drugs cure Alzheimer\u2019s?\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The team took publicly available data from three studies of the Alzheimer\u2019s brain that measured single-cell gene expression in brain cells from deceased donors with or without Alzheimer\u2019s disease. They used this data to produce gene expression signatures for Alzheimer\u2019s disease in neurons and glia. The researchers compared these signatures with those found in the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,1495,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-health","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}