J Cancer 2019; 10(10):2194-2204. doi:10.7150/jca.27851 This issue Cite
Research Paper
1. Institute of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, China
2. Department of Ophthalmology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang 453000, China
3. Tianjin Ocelean Pharma, Tianjin, China
4. Henan Key Laboratory of Immunology and Targeted Therapy, and
5. Henan Collaborative Innovation Center of Molecular Diagnosis and Laboratory Medicine, Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, China;
*Equally contributed
Neuroblastoma was one of the most life-threatening cancer developed in children, yet the conventional therapies currently used leave an unmet gap for clinical requirements. Temozolomide is the first line of drug in the treatment of neuroblastorma nowadays. Giving the fact that temozolomide treatment offered limited healing effect and patients responded divergently, an alternative beneficial path is urgently requested. Nifurtimox, a drug against Trypanosoma cruzi, was happened to find competent in treating a patient who carried aggressive neuroblastoma. Although in vitro studies demonstrated that nifurtimox has cytotoxic features against tumor cells, a systematic investigation in vivo is generally inadequate. Here we exhibited that nifurtimox could suppress the progression of neuroblastoma in vivo, while maintain the health condition to a great extent. Importantly, as comparing to temozolomide, nifurtimox presented a stronger effect on inhibiting tumor development, strongly suggesting that nifurtimox is a preferential alternative drug in treating neuroblastoma. Additionally, it was shown that Akt-GSK3β signaling cascade was involved in tumor arrest induced by nifurtimox.
Keywords: Neuroblastoma, Nifurtimox, Temozolomide, tumor suppression