Studies into Drugs Being Used For Cancer Treatment

When medical drugs are created, they are usually tested and used for the singular purpose they were designed for. 

However, Sanjay Srivastava Ph.D. with the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center has worked for 20 years investigating drugs and determining if they can have additional uses in treatments they were not originally developed for. 

He has been working over the last 10 years focussing on non-cancer drugs to treat various cancers. 

His efforts have paid off recently with a patent to allow Pimavanserin, a drug developed to assist in hallucination reduction in Parkinson’s patients, to be considered as a treatment for Alzheimer’s, Schizophrenia, and depression, and now for the cancer field. 

Specifically looking into brain cancer, the hurdle in treating tumors in the brain is a natural filter in the bloodstream to prevent harmful substances from entering the brain. 

Srivastava is looking to begin window of opportunity trials with pimavanserin for patients waiting for surgery or receiving therapies.