According to new research published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, dasatinib, a drug commonly used to treat certain types of leukemia, may have antidiabetic benefits comparable to pharmaceuticals used to treat diabetes, and with more investigation, could offer a unique therapy for diabetic patients.
Doctors and scientists are continually exploring for new and better ways to treat cancer patients. One approach to accomplish this is to develop and test novel medications. They’re also looking for novel ways to use medications that are already on the market.
Dasatinib is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor that is used to treat tumors, cancerous tissue, and chronic myelogenous leukemia. Researchers from Mayo Clinic and the University of Connecticut School of Medicine wanted to see if dasatinib has any anti-diabetic benefits in elderly type 2 diabetes patients.
They discovered it may have an antidiabetic effect comparable to or possibly greater than current drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes using a Mayo Clinic database with more than 9 million case histories spanning 25 years.
Researchers must first ensure that a medicine is both safe and effective before it can be prescribed to a patient. This procedure can take many years and a lot of money. The time it takes to travel from a researcher’s idea to the development and approval of medicine varies.
Dasatinib is a senolytic medication, a type of agent first discovered at Mayo Clinic and shown to target senescent cells in animal tests. Senolytic medicines appear to postpone, prevent, or ameliorate age-related changes, chronic diseases, and geriatric syndromes in animal studies, and they accumulate in numerous tissues with aging and at sites of pathology in chronic diseases.
Our findings suggest that dasatinib or related senolytic drugs may become diabetic therapies. More study is needed to determine whether these findings also are observed in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus but without underlying malignant disease.
Robert Pignolo
“Our findings suggest that dasatinib or related senolytic drugs may become diabetic therapies,” says Robert Pignolo, M.D., Ph.D., the study’s senior author. “More study is needed to determine whether these findings also are observed in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus but without underlying malignant disease.”
A blood glucose level of 4 grams, or about a teaspoon, is required for appropriate function in a number of tissues in humans, and the human brain uses roughly 60% of blood glucose in fasting, sedentary people.
Glucose can be carried through the bloodstream from the intestines or liver to other body tissues. Insulin, a hormone produced in the pancreas, is the primary regulator of cellular glucose uptake.
The Mayo Clinic’s Informatics for Integrating Biology at the Bedside framework, which organizes and transforms patient records into a deidentified research database, was employed by the researchers.
The trial began with a total of 9.3 million people being screened for the use of dasatinib or imatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor that was licensed for the treatment of a kind of leukemia in 2001 but had limited senolytic action.
Mayo Clinic patients from 1994 to 2019 were included in the records. 279 patients were treated with imatinib and 118 with dasatinib, and a total of 48 patients were enrolled in the study following the additional screening.
Dasatinib decreases serum glucose in individuals with pre-existing type 2 diabetes more than imatinib and is similar to first-line diabetic medicines like metformin and sulfonylureas, according to the study.
The molar concentration, measured in mmol/L (millimoles per liter, or millimolar, abbreviated mM), is the international standard for measuring blood glucose levels. Mass concentration is measured in mg/dL (milligrams per decilitre) in the United States, western Germany, and other nations.
Dr. Pignolo, director of the Translation and Pharmacology Program at Mayo Clinic’s Robert and Arlene Kogod Center for Aging, says more research is needed to identify whether dasatinib’s antidiabetic impact is attributable largely to its senolytic qualities.
If that’s the case, combining dasatinib with another senolytic medicine like quercetin may be more beneficial than using dasatinib alone.
“This study was really the first proof-of-concept that a senolytic drug may have substantial long-term beneficial effects in humans,” Dr. Pignolo says.
“According to research in animal models, it is not necessary to give senolytic drugs continuously, and so patients may need only take a drug such as dasatinib every few weeks, reducing possible side effects.”
The study was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences; the Robert and Arlene Kogod Professorship in Geriatric Medicine at Mayo Clinic; the National Institute on Aging; the Noaber Foundation Professorship in Aging at Mayo Clinic; the Connor Group; the Robert J. and Theresa W. Ryan Foundation; and the Travelers Chair in Geriatrics and Gerontology at the University of Connecticut Health Center.
