Drug to Prevent Organ Rejection May Promote Cancer, Study Finds

Cyclosporine, a drug given to transplant patients to prevent organ rejection, may turn pre-existing cancer more aggressive, according to researchers from Cornell University. Transplants have always carried the risk of cancer because doctors must suppress the immune system with powerful drugs such as cyclosporine to prevent the patient’s body from attacking the new organ.

But previously it was believed the cancer risk increased because the weakened immune system failed to destroy defective cells that could turn malignant. Dr. Manikkam Suthanthiran and his colleagues report in today’s Nature that they treated human lung and bladder cancer cells with cyclosporine and found that the drug promotes the production of a natural protein called “transforming growth factor beta,” already a suspect in cancer growth. The drug itself did not cause cancer, they emphasized.

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II