Finding a way to stop chemotherapy from damaging the heart
Study suggests drug intervention may prevent doxorubicin-induced cardiac injury
There could be an intervention on the horizon to help prevent heart damage caused by the common chemotherapy drug doxorubicin, new research suggests.
Scientists found that this chemo drug, used to treat many types of solid tumors and blood cancers, is able to enter heart cells by hitchhiking on a specific type of protein that functions as a transporter to move a drug from the blood into heart cells.
By introducing another anti-cancer drug in advance of the chemo, the researchers were able to block the transporter protein, effectively stopping the delivery of doxorubicin to those cardiac cells. This added drug, nilotinib, has been previously found to inhibit activation of other, related transport proteins.