Cancer drugs reverse diabetes in mice

Commonly used cancer drugs imatinib and sunitinib prevented and reversed type 1 diabetes in a mouse model, US researchers have reported.

Both drugs are tyrosine kinase inhibitors that the researchers believe may have important applications in the treatment not only of type 1 diabetes but other autoimmune diseases as well.

Cedric Louvet, Jeffrey Bluestone and colleagues from the University of California, San Francisco, report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today that treatment of non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice with imatinib – marketed by Novartis as Glivec (or Gleevec in the US) – prevented and reversed type 1 diabetes.

Similar results were observed with sunitinib – marketed by Pfizer as Sutent – the researchers said.

Glivec is a frontline treatment for chronic myeloid leukaemia and Sutent for renal cell carcinoma and imatinib-resistant gastrointestinal stromal cancer.

Both target tyrosine kinases and imatinib has been shown to prevent disease and induced remission in an autoimmune arthritis model.

The researchers found that not only did imatinib reverse diabetes in the mouse model but also led to durable remission after discontinuation of therapy.

“Tyrosine kinase inhibitors reverse type 1 diabetes in nonobese diabetic mice” by Cedric Louvet et al is published in PNAS [doi:10.1073/pnas.0810246105].