11.23.08
Gleevec Prevents and Reverses Type 1 Diabetes in Mice
THURSDAY, Nov. 20 (HealthDay News) — Gleevec and other similar drugs can prevent and reverse type 1 diabetes in mice, and as little as 10 weeks of treatment can lead to long-term remission, according to a report published online Nov. 17 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.
Cedric Louvet, Ph.D., from the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues tested the effectiveness of various tyrosine kinase inhibitors to treat type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease, in a mouse model of the disease (the non-obese diabetic mouse).
The researchers found that treatment with imatinib (Gleevec) or sunitinib (Sutent), which inhibit multiple protein kinases, prevented and reversed type 1 diabetes. In contrast, the tyrosine kinase inhibitor PLX647 or an anti-c-Kit antibody were largely ineffective, whereas a soluble form of platelet-derived growth factor receptor rapidly reversed diabetes. In addition, discontinuation of imatinib treatment at 10 weeks led to long-term remission in most mice.
“Thus, long-term efficacy and tolerance is likely to depend on inhibiting a combination of tyrosine kinases supporting the use of selective kinase inhibitors as a new, potentially very attractive approach for the treatment of type 1 diabetes,” Louvet and colleagues conclude.
One of the study authors is an employee of Plexxikon in Berkeley, Calif.
