FAMILIAR MEDICINES THAT MAY PROVE EFFECTIVE

DEVELOPING a new cancer drug can take ten years — and when they come through they can be prohibitively expensive. The drug pembrolizumab, for melanoma and lung cancer, for example, costs £100,000 a year.

However, using existing medication means the treatment is potentially available much quicker — and often far cheaper. Also, because doctors already have information about their long-term use, they will bring fewer risks.

Imperial College London has been using algorithms to sift through the anti-cancer potential of 1,500 existing drugs and 8,000 everyday foods. The researchers have already found ‘several compounds not conventionally used as a cancer treatment that demonstrated high anti-cancer likeness,’ according to their latest findings published this month in Scientific Reports.

They found that tea, carrot, celery, orange, grape, coriander, cabbage and dill contained a high number of molecules ‘with high anti-cancer likeness.’

Among the drugs identified so far as having anti-cancer potential are metformin as well as the antibiotic rosoxacin and the antifungal clinoquinol. However, the researchers stress that more work is needed to confirm these initial results.

Other existing drugs have already been re-purposed for cancer treatment, including thalidomide. First marketed in 1957 as a sedative, it was also controversially given to women to help with morning sickness, although this ceased after it caused birth defects.

In recent years, it has been re-purposed as a cancer drug, as it can stop the development of new blood vessels the cancer needs to survive. It is now the first-line treatment for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.