An Approved Malarial Drug is Promising for Preventing and Stopping Breast Cancer

Explore New Aspects from Old Items—Chloroquine

During a clinical trial, researchers of Mason Center unexpectedly found a malarial drug—Chloroquine can stop the precursor cells of breast cancer, which brings hope and new thoughts for patients and doctors.

Thus they launch a PINC (Preventing Invasive Neoplasia with Chloroquine) trial targeting on ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIN).

The Chloroquine, widely prescribed drug used to prevent or treat malaria. It is rarely reported to have serious side effect for people. During a clinical trial, they surprisingly found Chloroquine can block the digestive process of cancerous cells: they destroy the pathway of cell autophagy. As we know, under stress, pathogenic cells will eat themselves if there is no enough food. By blocking the way, pathogenic cells will be starved without hurting normal cells as normal cells won’t autophagy.

The PINC trial was conduct among suspicious women. Those women were waiting results between DCIN and surgery. During this time, they took Chloroquine once a week for four weeks. As a result, their lesion sizes reduced significantly. This showed it is helpful and safe. On other hand, Chloroquine is already an approved drug, scientists don’t need to test the drug safety, toxicity etc again. With further trials, researchers believe this drug would become another common choice for women to prevent and stop breast cancer.