Drug repositioning for colon cancer treatment: exploring the putative use of metformin and propranolol

ANSELMINO LE; BAGLIONI MV; RICO MJ; ROZADOS VR; SCHAROVSKY OG; FERNÁNDEZ CO; MARTÍNEZ-MARIGNAC V; MENACHO-MÁRQUEZ M.

Congreso; Reunión conjunta de sociedades de Biociencias; 2017

Drug repositioning or repurposing in oncology refers to the useof drugs originally formulated for other indications that showed antitumor potential. In this work we made a screening of repurposingdrugs that included metformin (M; diabetes treatment), propranolol(P; indicated to treat hypertension), chloroquine (malaria treatmentor prevention), DHEA (sexual hormones precursor), orlistat (obesitytreatment), atorvastatin (cholesterol treatment) and dichloroacetate(a pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase inhibitor). The antitumor potential of these drugs was evaluated in vitro with HCT116 human coloncancer cells through standard viability assays, either individuallyor in a combined manner. All the tested drugs had the potential toinhibit significantly HCT116 cells proliferation in a dose-dependentmanner. From the combinations tested, M+P resulted attractive as itshowed a strong growth inhibition even combining low doses of bothdrugs (P