A new study done by Rutgers University and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey found that the drug riluzole is able to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease) and slow the growth of highly aggressive melanoma skin cancer by limiting the amount of protein glutamate.
People with melanoma have cells that overproduce glutamate which causes growth and expansion of the skin cancer as well as over-stimulated neurons that burn out.
"I think this drug is going to be extremely important as an adjunct to surgical treatment for stage 3 or stage 4 melanoma," said Dr. James Goydos, a surgical oncologist at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey. "The challenge is to keep it from recurring, which has happened in patients on the order of 50 percent. With low toxicity likely, riluzole could potentially be given for long periods of time to slow down the metabolic process responsible for the disease's recurrence."
In lab tests using human melanoma cell lines on animals, riluzole turned off overproduction of glutamate while testing the drug on 11 people with late stage melanoma and and some patients in phase 0 received riluzole for two-week period.
The research was to be presented April 15 at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, in San Diego, but some patients in the group showed indications of responding to the drug, so they will be reassessed.
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