Pimozide, an Anti-psychotic Drug, May be Another Solution to Triple Negative Breast Cancer

I recently listened to a talk from a classmate about her mother having breast cancer and having to replace breast muscle with abdominal muscle, leading to 2 years of hard recovery time as the patient was unable to easily replace the muscle scraped off during the cancer treatment. I went exploring about breast cancer since I didn't know much about it, and came across an article I want to share with all of you.

For those that don't know, a breast cancer can develop in women due to various genetic and environmental factors including obesity and age, with the breast cancer accounting for approximately 26% of all cancer incidents in the women of the U.S. Out of the various breast cancer types, the triple-negative breast cancer does not have any of the receptors that are commonly found in breast cancer, and thus any of the drug treatments that would have been available for breast cancer with receptors for estrogen, progesterone, and human epidermal growth factor(tamoxifen and trastuzumab) are not viable for triple-negative breast cancer. 

I have read a paper on Oncotarget detailing how Pimozide, an anti-psychotic drug has been shown to suppress cell growth of cancer cells in vitro by inhibiting cell proliferation in a dose and time dependent manner in breast cancer cells and lung cancer cells. Pimozide also promoted cell apoptosis and downregulated RAN GTPase, which stops RAN, a protein that's essential for the translocation of RNA and proteins through the nuclear pore complex, from working properly. This means that during cancer development and proliferation, DNA won't be able to send or receive signals from the rest of the cell, leading to tumor suppression and eventually cell death. When the Pimozide was tested against target samples implanted in mice, the highest dose of Pimozide killed up to 90 percent of the cancer cells but only 5 percent of the healthy ones. Seeing that the current treatments against triple-negative breast cancers include: lumpectomy to remove the breast cancer lump or mastectomy to remove the entire breast, as well as chemotherapy treatment to target small leftover cancer cells which merrily causes havoc in the rest of the patient's body, the small amount of off-target effects is really a good news for the breast cancer patients. 

Pimozide has started clinical trials, and seeing that it is already  an anti-psychotic drug on the market, it is likely that the clinical trial will be over soon, so I'm hoping for some good news regarding breast cancer. However, as an anti-psychotic drug, it is very likely to have further effect on the human body than it did for mice, so we will have to see if this medicine manages to be accepted from clinical trials.

reference
Dakir, El-Habib, et al. “The Anti-Psychotic Drug Pimozide Is a Novel Chemotherapeutic for Breast Cancer.” Oncotarget, Oncotarget, 19 Sept. 2018, www.oncotarget.com/index.php?journal=oncotarget&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=26175.

http://www.oncotarget.com/index.php?journal=oncotarget&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=26175