Cancer-fighting drug may limit neurological damage

Launce Rake and Mary Manning

Friday, Nov. 10, 2000 | 10:05 a.m.

NEW YORK -- A drug widely used for patients with cancer -- and sometimes abused by athletes -- could have far-reaching applications for limiting damage from neurological diseases, a prominent researcher said this week.

Anthony Cerami, director of the nonprofit Kenneth S. Warren Laboratories, said erythropoietin -- commonly called EPO -- has been shown to limit cell damage in test rodents, and could have similar applications for humans suffering from Alzheimer's disease, strokes, epilepsy and other diseases affecting brain function.

Las Vegas medical experts and biochemist Cerami expressed caution over the findings, saying therapeutic results in laboratory animals often do not work in humans and warned that the drug is not a "magic bullet."

Cerami cautioned that the results are preliminary, and researchers do not know the risks and benefits associated with its use. The drug is considered safe for cancer patients, who take it to overcome the side effects of chemotherapy.

Contradictory findings were published a year ago.

The National Institute of Aging published a study in 1999 indicating that memory in rats dosed with EPO declined over three months, cancer expert Dr. John Ellerton of Las Vegas said.

"It's an interesting idea," Ellerton said of Cerami's work. However, he warned that transferring favorable experimental results from animals to humans is a huge leap. "So many things work in animal models, but do they work in humans? We don't know."

Another drug study using an antibiotic seems to be effective in reducing the devastating effects of Alzheimer's.

Harvard psychiatrist Ashley Bush is testing the antibiotic Clioquinol in 50 Alzheimer's patients in an Australian clinical trial.

Clioquinol in laboratory mice appears to stop bleaching of the brain as well as plaque growth characteristic in Alzheimer's disease, Bush said.

According to Cerami's study, EPO boosts the production of red blood cells by blocking the mechanism within cells that tells them to self-destruct, he explained. The drug apparently performs the same function with brain and nerve cells.

Laboratory rats subjected to physical brain trauma had a 90 percent reduction in the amount of cellular damage surrounding the wound site, Cerami said. That cellular loss is a major problem associated with strokes. The stroke itself may kill a relatively small area, but a common side effect is the death of a larger area in the brain.

Alzheimer's and other diseases can affect a disproportionately large amount of tissue. EPO may stop that process, Cerami said.

Bringing such a drug to the public commonly takes four to six years and hundreds of millions of dollars in testing before it can be commonly used for treatment, he warned.

But because the drug is available for other uses, it could be prescribed "off-label" by any doctor, Cerami said.

He is concerned that the study, first published in September in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to unrestrained use of the drug without fully studying the potential side effects.

Cerami discussed the drug and his research during a meeting of a dozen journalists from across the country studying age-related issues at the New York City-based International Longevity Center, an international research, policy and education consortium associated with the Mount Sinai-New York University Health System.

Everette Dennis, the center's executive director, said the research "is a case study in a potential treatment mode that is under discussion and moving from theory to practice."

However, he said, many questions -- such as side effect and the proper dosage -- still have to be answered.

Some athletes have died from dosing themselves with EPO before strenuous sports activity, Cerami said.

Although there is no EPO research ongoing at UNLV's cancer institute, Director Stephen Carper studied it. The drug is expensive, he said, noting, "If you are rich enough, you can get it."