Disulfiram: An old anti-alcoholism medicine gives cancer patients new hope

There are over 200 types of cancer reported all over the globe. The risk of getting cancer is as high as 1:2 -1:3 in the West but WHO predictions suggest cancer risks are also dramatically increasing in low-medium income countries likely to lead to estimated 21 million deaths world wide by 2030.

Although the outcomes of cancer treatment have been improved in the last three decades most of them remain ‘incurable’. The complexity of this disease at genetic and phenotypic levels leads to its clinical diversity and therapeutic resistance. The recent discovery that many cancers are probably driven by a small sub-population of cancer stem cells (CSCs), suggests that the therapeutic outcomes will be significantly improved by effectively targeting CSCs.

The medical need for better cancer therapies is urgent while drug development is slow and costly, mainly due to the large risk of toxicity of novel molecules. Development of a new drug takes on average 15 years and US$1.5bn with only 5-25% of new oncology drugs in clinical development actually reaching the market. This has led to an increasing appreciation of the potential of repurposing of known drugs.

We have shown that disulfiram, an anti-alcoholism drug used in clinic for over 60 years, shows specific activity against a wide range of cancers. Importantly, we have been able to demonstrate that disulfiram specifically destroys cancer-stem-like cells and enhances the cytotoxicity of several conventional first-line anticancer drugs.

Although disulfiram shows strong anticancer activity in laboratory, clinical use of disulfiram as an anti-cancer drug is limited by its rapid degradation and extensive metabolic conversion in the bloodstream.

To overcome this bottleneck, we recently used nano-technology to wrap disulfiram into nanoparticles and extend its half-life in the blood from 4 minutes to over 7 hours and obtained very promising anticancer activity in cell culture and in brain, breast, liver, lung cancer and mesothelioma animal models. Nano-wrapped disulfiram blocks tumour growth and metastasis in mouse models. The preliminary clinical studies manifested very promising outcomes in pancreatic, lung and breast cancer patients.

Disulfiram is a Food and Drug Administration approved drug. Our invention will quickly lead it into cancer treatment. The success of our study will significantly benefit our cancer patients and economy.