{"id":205802,"date":"2025-11-29T02:39:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T02:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/205802\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T02:39:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T02:39:18","slug":"this-common-drug-seems-to-fight-one-of-the-deadliest-brain-cancers-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/205802\/","title":{"rendered":"This Common Drug Seems to Fight One of The Deadliest Brain Cancers : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hydralazine<\/a> has been used to treat high blood pressure<\/a> for many decades, even though it’s never been exactly clear how it works. Now a new study answers some key questions about the medication \u2013 and adds an intriguing new link to brain cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Taking a closer look at the effects of hydralazine on human and mouse cells, researchers led by a team from the University of Pennsylvania found that it blocks a particular enzyme called 2-aminoethanethiol dioxygenase (ADO).<\/p>\n

That same enzyme, as it happens, is thought to play a role in aggressive glioblastoma brain cancers<\/a>. This new understanding of hydralazine could lead the way to new cancer<\/a> treatments, as well as improve the drug’s effectiveness for its current targets.<\/p>\n

Related: Serotonin Could Play an Unexpected Role in Cancer, Scientists Discover<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

“Hydralazine is one of the earliest vasodilators ever developed, and it’s still a first-line treatment for preeclampsia \u2013 a hypertensive disorder that accounts for 5-15 percent of maternal deaths worldwide,” says<\/a> physician-scientist Kyosuke Shishikura, from the University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

“It came from a ‘pre-target’ era of drug discovery, when researchers relied on what they saw in patients first and only later tried to explain the biology behind it.”<\/p>\n

\"CancerThe ADO enzyme catalyzes reactions that produce hypotaurine, which increases cancer growth. (Shishikura et al., Sci. Adv., 2025)<\/p>\n

The researchers describe ADO as an “alarm bell” that alerts the body to dropping oxygen levels. It triggers a chain reaction, tightening blood vessels by destroying so-called RGS proteins (short for regulators of G-protein signaling<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Previous studies<\/a> have shown that glioblastoma tumors are often high in ADO, hijacking it to produce a chemical called hypotaurine<\/a>, which helps the cancer cells spread, survive for longer, and tolerate stress.<\/p>\n

But no ADO inhibitors were known prior to this study.<\/p>\n

Hydralazine effectively mutes ADO, the team found: RGS proteins aren’t attacked, blood vessels aren’t squeezed, and blood pressure drops. In experiments with human glioblastoma cells, hydralazine halted tumor growth<\/a> by blocking ADO.<\/p>\n

It’s very early days \u2013 the effects of hydralzine still need to be tested in people with glioblastoma<\/a> in clinical trials \u2013 but these are promising findings that could unlock a way to control the spread of these notoriously hard-to-treat<\/a> brain tumors.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

The newly uncovered mechanism also explains why hydralazine is an effective treatment for preeclampsia, a high blood pressure condition in pregnant women<\/a>. That means the drug can be better engineered and personalized, to reduce side effects and improve results.<\/p>\n

“Understanding how hydralazine works at the molecular level offers a path toward safer, more selective treatments for pregnancy-related hypertension \u2013 potentially improving outcomes for patients who are at greatest risk,” says<\/a> chemist Megan Matthews, from the University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

The discoveries here mean better drugs for both high blood pressure<\/a> and brain cancer can now be developed, carefully balancing the need to hit particular pathways in cells while minimizing harm to healthy parts of the body.<\/p>\n

And since hydralazine is already widely used, understanding its mechanism of action gives scientists something of a head start if they want to build more treatments based on the compound.<\/p>\n

Further down the line, we might be able to take out one of the key defenses of glioblastoma, adding to the treatments already in development<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It’s rare that an old cardiovascular drug ends up teaching us something new about the brain,” says<\/a> Matthews, “but that’s exactly what we’re hoping to find more of \u2013 unusual links that could spell new solutions.”<\/p>\n

The research was published in Science Advances<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hydralazine has been used to treat high blood pressure for many decades, even though it’s never been exactly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[18,135,19,17,808],"class_list":{"0":"post-205802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-msft-content"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115630674408979549","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}