Ribarvirin shows promise in treating cancer patients

William Atkins
Thursday, 14 May 2009 18:04

Science - Health

An important Canadian study has found that the common anti-viral drug ribarvirin may be effective in the treatment of around 30% of all cancers. Further studies hope to increase this percentage.


The drug they studied is branded under such names as Copegus, Rebetol, Ribasphere, Vilona and Virazole.

As an anti-viral drug, ribarvirin is used to treat severe human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), hepatitis C, and other such viral infections.

The purpose of the study was to determine if ribavirin would be effective in the treatment of patients with refractory or relapsed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) of the M4 and M5 subtype.

Dr. Katherine Borden led the study with respect to monitoring the molecular events in the patients tested. Borden is from the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) and the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology at the University of Montreal, Canada.

Dr. Sarit Assouline, from the Segal Cancer Center, Lady Davis Institute, at Jewish General Hospital (Montreal, Canada), led the clinical aspects of the study.

The article summarizing the work was written in Blood, a journal of the American Society of Hematology.

The Blood article “Molecular targeting of the oncogene eIF4E in AML: a proof-of-principle clinical trial with ribavirin” is authored by Drs. Assouline and Borden, along with Biljana Culjkovic, Eftihia Cocolakis, Caroline Rousseau, Nathalie Beslu, Abdellatif Amri, Stephen Caplan, Brian Leber, Denis-Claude Roy, and Wilson H. Miller Jr.

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