Turning waste into treasure! Ineffective for Alzheimer's disease but may be used to treat cancer

A new study in "Nature-Cancer" once again demonstrates the huge potential of the existing drug treasury.

BACE1 inhibitors used to be potential drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, and the scientific community has also expressed great expectations for it

Therefore, researchers have speculated that inhibiting the function of BACE1 can reduce amyloid plaques, which can be used to treat Alzheimer's disease

But in fact, BACE1 is also expressed on the surface of a type of immune cells that appear in the tumor microenvironment-tumor-associated macrophages (TAM)

Through the drug screening process, they found a BACE1 inhibitor MK-8931 that can effectively cope with pTAM

▲MK-8931 can treat mouse glioma (picture source: reference [2])

From the observation results, the larger the number of sTAM, the more effectively the tumor cells can be eliminated

In addition, this drug can achieve better results when combined with low-dose radiation, because radiation can make TAM more likely to penetrate into tumors

However, it is not clear why BACE1 inhibitors can promote the transformation of TAM types

These molecules are expressed in large amounts on pTAM, but are rarely seen on sTAM

Although BACE1 inhibitors have no effect on Alzheimer's disease, its safety has been proven, which means it will be very convenient if it needs to be reused to fight cancer cells

Note: The original text has been deleted

Reference materials:

[1] Drug designed for Alzheimer's disease may hold promise for treating glioblastoma.

[2] Kui Zhai et al, Pharmacological inhibition of BACE1 suppresses glioblastoma growth by stimulating macrophage phagocytosis of tumor cells, Nature Cancer (2021).