Ruxolitinib treats not only cancer, but also focal alopecia
An anti-cancer drug was successfully used to treat baldness
Thanks to their discovery, the authors successfully used a drug originally intended for the treatment of one of the types of bone marrow cancer to completely restore hair loss in the first three patients. The work was published in the journal Nature Medicine (Luzhou Xing et al., Alopecia areata is driven by cytotoxic T lymphocytes and is reversed by JAK inhibition).
Focal (nest) alopecia is hair loss due to damage to the cells of the root system by T cells of the immune defense, manifested in the form of one or more foci of baldness. It is known about the existence of a genetic predisposition to focal allopecia. Due to a lack of understanding of the molecular mechanism underlying the development of the disease, targeted therapies that provide a complete cure have not yet been developed.
Four years ago, a group of employees of the Department of Dermatology and Developmental Genetics of CUMC, led by Professor Angela M. Christiano, as a result of a genome-wide study of more than a thousand patients with focal allopecia, found that the activation of natural cytotoxicity receptors (NKG2D) by specific proteins plays the role of a "trigger" forcing T cells to attack hair follicle cells (ligands) on their surface. However, it remained unclear exactly what type of T-killers were involved in this process.
This time, Cristiano's group, while working on a mouse model of the disease, managed to find out that in this case we are talking about cytotoxic effector memory T cells CD8+NKG2D+, forming a secondary immune response. This discovery allowed the researchers to suggest that the use of drugs belonging to the class of selective inhibitors (blockers) of janus kinases (JAK kinases), which play an important role in the activation of inflammatory processes, can effectively interrupt the identified cascade of immune reactions.
The authors tested two types of such drugs recently approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on mice with focal allopecia. One of them, tofacitinib, is used as a therapy for another autoimmune disease, rheumatoid arthritis. Another – ruxolitinib (ruxolitinib) – is used in the treatment of myelofibrosis, one of the types of bone marrow cancer. Experiments have shown that in animals with very pronounced manifestations of the disease, both drugs completely restored the hairline in 12 weeks. At the same time, the effect of the action of JAK-inhibitors turned out to be long–term - the new fur that grew in mice did not fall out even a few months after the end of therapy.
Based on the results obtained, the authors conducted a small clinical trial of the use of ruxolitinib (trade name Jakavi or Jakafi manufactured by Novartis) on three patients who had more than 30 percent hair loss on their heads due to focal alopecia. In all participants, in four to five months of taking ruxolitinib, the lost hairline was completely restored. There were no significant negative effects on the health of patients. Currently, scientists plan to continue and expand clinical trials of JAK kinase inhibitors as a therapy for focal allopecia.
Animation (4 months in a couple of seconds) from the press release of Columbia University Medical Center
FDA-Approved Drug Restores Hair in Patients with Alopecia Areata – VM.
It is worth noting that in June of this year, dermatologists of the Yale University School of Medicine reported on the successful clinical experience of using tofacitinib (trade name Xeljanz manufactured by Pfizer) for allopecia. The drug completely restored the hair on the patient's head, face and body.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru18.08.2014