Re-Designing Designer Drugs to Stop Cancer

Researchers at the University of Birmingham could bring new hope to the 10,000 people in the UK alone, who are diagnosed with Lymphoma, cancer of the white blood cells, each year.

Backed by the Leukaemia Research Fund, the researchers had begun by exploring whether chemicals known to affect the brain, could have an impact on the immune system and the cancers that arise from it.

What they discovered was that both Prozac and MDMA, commonly known as Ecstasy, proved effective at stopping or significantly slowing the growth of Lymphoma cancer cells in over half of the samples studied.

Now they want to find out exactly what part of the action of these drugs has an impact on the cancer cells, in the hope that they can re-design these designer drugs, in order to kill cancers.