Everyone’s favorite blue little pill might be even more impressive than we knew. A recent study suggests that sildenafil, the active ingredient in the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, may actually have a potent anti-cancer effect as well. Researchers in Israel studied how sildenafil affected cancer cells in the lab, and found that it appears to help prevent cancers from spreading further by inhibiting the cells’ ability to use cholesterol. The findings could someday point to a novel means of tackling metastatic cancers, the researchers say. “We have uncovered a new biological pathway that links a well-known signaling molecule to cholesterol regulation within cells, and shown how this pathway can be harnessed to interfere with the ability of cancer cells to form metastases,” said senior study author Ayelet Erez, a cancer researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in a statement from the university.
Sildenafil and cancer By their very nature, cancer cells are different in many ways from their normal counterparts. One such example is how they might rely on less commonly used chemical chain reactions to help them keep growing and to spread elsewhere in the body (a process called metastasis). The researchers were particularly interested in understanding how cancer cells use cholesterol to fuel this unchecked growth, and whether this process could be safely interrupted.
