High-powered drug screening reveals new targets for endometriosis help

Safe and cheap drugs used to treat everything from heart disease, diabetes and ­depression have emerged as ­potential new treatments for endometriosis.

EXCLUSIVE: Safe and cheap drugs used to treat everything from heart disease, diabetes and ­depression have emerged as ­potential new treatments for endometriosis.

Royal Women’s Hospital researchers have undertaken a new way of drug screening to find ways to halt the condition, as common as ­diabetes and asthma and ­affecting up to 10 per cent of women.

To their surprise, by screening almost 4000 drugs in a ­national library, a range of on-the-shelf treatments were ­revealed as strong matches for their ability to stop the growth of endometrial cells.

ONE IN 10 VICTORIAN WOMEN ARE STRUGGLING WITH ENDOMETRIOSIS

By screening drugs already on the market, the researchers aim to bypass the need for safety trials, and fast-track treatments that can stop cells that usually line the uterus to grow elsewhere in the body, often causing infertility and crippling pain.

Lead researcher Jacqueline Donoghue, of the Women’s Gynaecology ­Research Centre, said they sought a treatment that interfered with oestrogen — the hormone driving the disease — but didn’t affect fertility and could reduce pain.

But given oestrogen was a hormone used throughout the body, they needed to find a drug that could block it specifically in the endometrial tissue.

“This high throughput screening has never been done in endometriosis. It’s primarily used to look for anti-cancer drugs,” Dr Donoghue said.

“Because the drugs we looked at are already in the clinic, if we find a drug or combination we feel will be beneficial we can go straight into late-stage testing in a patient.”

Safe and cheap drugs used to treat everything from heart disease, diabetes and ­depression have emerged as ­potential new treatments for endometriosis. Generic picture

They screened 3800 drugs at Griffith University across cells taken from the biopsies of three patients, to see which were highly effective at stopping cell growth. Fifty drugs matched, with different drugs more effective for each stage.

“This tells us the disease is extremely complex,” Dr Donoghue said. “We’re starting to see that each woman has a disease that is completely unique to her.”

The study comes as the ­federal government launches a $4.5 million action plan to fund research and increase awareness about the condition affecting 700,000 Australians.

Dr Donoghue said they would now take their shortlist of drug targets and work to find out how they interfered with oestrogen’s effects, and how this could be applied to the disease.

The findings were presented as part of The Women’s Research Week, and funded by the Norman Beischer Medical Research Foundation.

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