(Press-News.org) Testing thousands of approved drugs, EPFL scientists have identified an unlikely anti-tuberculosis drug: the over-the-counter antacid lansoprazole (Prevacid®).
Tuberculosis continues to be a global pandemic, second only to AIDS as the greatest single-agent killer in the world. In 2013 alone, the TB bug Mycobacterium tuberculosis caused 1.5 million deaths and almost nine million new infections. Resistance to TB drugs is widespread, creating an urgent need for new medicines. EPFL scientists have now identified lansoprazole, a widely used, over-the-counter antacid, as an excellent candidate against tuberculosis. The study is published in Nature Communications.
It takes well over ten years for a new tuberculosis drug to complete these trials and be approved for human use. Meanwhile, traditional antibiotics have led many strains of tuberculosis bacteria to evolve multi-drug resistance. Millions of new chemical compounds have been tested for their ability to disrupt the growth of M. tuberculosis in the test tube, but discouragingly few are currently in clinical trials.
But we can speed this process up. Compounds that have already been approved for use in humans could be repurposed as anti-tuberculosis medications, and cut down both the time and cost of new drug development.
Screening against tuberculosis
This is the strategy adopted by Stewart Cole's lab at EPFL. The assay uses a robotized system that gives candidate drugs to cultured lung cells that have been infected with M. tuberculosis. Robotized "high-throughput screens" like this are a growing trend in drug development as they can work through massive libraries of candidate drugs quickly and accurately in a day, as opposed to the months required by manual methods.
The EPFL researchers used a method they had previously developed, which can reflect what happens when the bacterium infects a lung much better than conventional screening assays used in tuberculosis research. The scientists screened a large panel of already approved drugs, and identified the blockbuster antacid lansoprazole, known commercially as Prevacid®, as a potential anti-tuberculosis medication.
A new use for an old drug
Lansoprazole was found to be effective against M. tuberculosis but only when the bacterium grows inside cells. The researchers investigated the underlying biology and found that lansoprazole kills the bacterium after the human cells convert it into a sulfur-containing metabolite. This metabolite targets a particular enzyme that is crucial for the bacterium to produce energy, thereby killing it off. In addition, when the scientists tested lansoprazole against a wide range of other bacteria, it proved to be highly selective for M. tuberculosis.
Lansoprazole belongs to a class of drugs known as "proton-pump inhibitors" that keep the stomach from pumping too much acid, thus preventing heartburn and ulcers. "Proton-pump inhibitors are both safe and widely sold around the world," says Stewart Cole. "Being highly active against drug-resistant strains of M. tuberculosis, this novel class of drugs provides us with an excellent opportunity to treat tuberculosis."
INFORMATION:
This work was supported by grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education.
Reference
Rybniker J, Vocat A, Sala C, Busso P, Pojer F, Benjak A, Cole ST. Lansoprazole is an antituberculous prodrug targeting cytochrome bc1. Nature Communications 07 July 2015. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8659
New research from the University of Copenhagen and Herlev and Gentofte Hospital shows that high vitamin C concentrations in the blood from the intake of fruit and vegetables are associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and early death.
Fruit and vegetables are healthy. We all know that. And now there is yet another good reason for eating lots of it. New research from the University of Copenhagen shows that the risk of cardiovascular disease and early death falls with a high intake of fruit and vegetables, and that this may be dued to vitamin C.
The ...
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (JULY 7, 2015). Researchers at Brown University examined three magnetically programmable shunt valves to see if the magnetic field emissions of headphones can cause unintentional changes in shunt valve settings. Based on their findings, the researchers state that it is highly unlikely that commercially available headphones will interfere with programmable shunt valve settings. Full details of this study can be found in "Programmable shunts and headphones: Are they safe together?" by Heather S. Spader, MD, and colleagues, published today online, ahead ...
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (JULY 7, 2015). Researchers conducted a prospective observational study in elderly patients and adult patients receiving antiplatelet therapy who presented with mild head injury at two trauma hospitals in Vienna: the Trauma Hospital Meidling and the Donauspital. The focus of the study was to see if blood serum levels of S100B protein in these patients could help identify whether their injuries included intracranial bleeding. If there was no indication of intracranial hemorrhage, these patients would not need additional testing or hospitalization. The ...
Policymakers and developers planning high-density housing near public transit with the goal of reducing automobile use and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming need a clearer understanding of the health risks from air pollution that may be created if that housing is also built near busy roads and freeways, according to new research by Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) scientists.
The study is one of the first to focus on the burden of heart disease that can result from residential exposures near major roadways ...
Weather is frequently portrayed in popular music, with a new scientific study finding over 750 popular music songs referring to weather, the most common being sun and rain, and blizzards being the least common. The study also found many song writers were inspired by weather events.
The study, led by the University of Southampton, together with the Universities of Oxford, Manchester, Newcastle (all part of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research) and the University of Reading analysed the weather through lyrics, musical genre, keys and links to specific weather ...
Faith-based organisations [1] are crucial in achieving the promise of universal health coverage--an adequate standard of health care for all people--especially for poor and marginalised groups, according to a new three-part Series on faith-based health care, published in The Lancet. The Series argues that building on the extensive experience, strengths, and capacities of faith-based organisations (eg, geographical coverage, influence, and infrastructure) offers a unique opportunity to improve health outcomes.
Because of their broad reach and influence, faith-based groups ...
Drinking alcohol while pregnant is common, ranging from 20% to 80% among those questioned in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, reveals a study of almost 18,000 women published in the online journal BMJ Open.
Women across all social strata drank during pregnancy, the findings showed. But expectant mums were significantly more likely to be drinkers if they were also smokers.
The researchers base their findings on an analysis of data from three studies: The Growing up in Ireland (GUI) study; the Screening for Pregnancy Endpoints (SCOPE) study; and the Pregnancy ...
The heightened risk of death after admission to hospital at the weekend--the so-called 'weekend effect'--is a feature of several developed countries' healthcare systems, and not just a problem for hospitals in England, reveals research published online in BMJ Quality & Safety.
The international nature of the findings suggests that this is a systematic phenomenon that not only crosses time, but also space, say the researchers.
In a bid to look in more detail at the evidence for the link between higher rates of death for patients admitted to hospital at weekends compared ...
A new smartphone app warns drinkers if they go over the recommended maximum daily/weekly units of alcohol, to help them better manage their intake, reveals a commentary published in the online journal BMJ Innovations.
The Alcohol Tracker, which has been developed by doctors and based on the clinical evidence of what works best, also provides built-in psychological therapies and helpline links for users to help steer them away from hazardous drinking.
Excess alcohol kills millions worldwide every year, but many available smartphone apps to manage drinking are not informed ...
1. For patients with no history of stroke, even very small brain lesions increase risk for death
Free abstract: http://www.annals.org/article.aspx?doi=10.7326/M14-2057
URL goes live when embargo lifts
For asymptomatic patients with no history of clinical stroke, having even very small brain lesions (less than 3 mm) detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) triples their risk for stroke and death, according to a study published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Having both very small and larger lesions increases the risk to eight-fold.
Subclinical brain infarctions ...
