A drug against stroke may influence breast cancer

A drug used to fight against stroke may influence breast cancer by destroying malignant cells without affecting healthy cells, said Thursday the Israeli researchers.

A team of scientists led by Professor Armon Malka Cohen of the University of Tel Aviv, said they had halted the spread of breast cancer in mice by injecting a substance, the poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP).

"Laboratory experiments showed that this type of medicine acted on hereditary type breast cancer, but we also found they were equally effective on other forms of breast cancer, which opens new perspectives in the general treatment of cancer," said Professor Shai Izraeli, involved in the project.

Experiment has shown that mice with breast cancer were all healed by the substance. The work has been published in the medical journal Breast Cancer Research.

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