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An old antidepressant helps the immune system fight tumors in mice
May. 14, 2021 , 2:00 PM
Drugs that unleash the body’s immune system to attack tumors, known as checkpoint inhibitors, have put some cancer patients into remission for years. But many others don’t benefit from the treatments. Now, researchers have found that an old type of antidepressant boosts the power of these inhibitors in mice and they suspect it could do the same in people.
It’s the “first study” to suggest such a role for the antidepressant, called a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), says biochemist Jean Chen Shih of the University of Southern California, who was not involved with the study but has long studied the MAO-A enzyme in the brain and, more recently, its role in cancer. She adds that the new combination therapy could benefit cancer patients who don’t respond to a widely used type of checkpoint inhibitor known as anti–PD-1 drugs.