Renewed interest in Thiabendazole

Plant pathologists should note that this fungicide has now been found to have a possible future in clinical medicine. This is revealed in the open-access paper by Cha H J, Byrom M, Mead P E, Ellington A D, Wallingford J B, Marcotte, E M (2012) ?Evolutionarily Repurposed Networks Reveal the Well-Known Antifungal Drug Thiabendazole to Be a Novel Vascular Disrupting Agent?. PLoS Biol? 10? (8).? See: the paper on-line. The authors stated that during the course of evolution, a group of proteins whose function in yeast is to maintain cell walls has found an alternative use in vertebrates regulating angiogenesis. This led the authors to hypothesize that drugs that modulated the yeast pathway might also modulate angiogenesis in humans and in animal models. A particularly promising candidate for this sort of approach was thiabendazole (TBZ), which has been in use as a systemic antifungal treatment for 40 years. TBZ was found to be able to act as a vascular disrupting agent and an angiogenesis inhibitor. It also slowed tumour growth and decreased vascular density in human tumours grafted into mice. TBZ?s historical safety data and low cost make it an outstanding candidate for translation to clinical use. ?????????? ? ??????????? ???????????????? Sources:International Newsletter on Plant Pathology, ISPP Newsletter 42 (10) October 2012 The picture is by parasitosdelganado.net ??????????????? ?