Daijiworld Media Network – New Delhi
New Delhi, Nov 18: A decades-old blood pressure drug commonly found in medicine cabinets — especially prescribed during pregnancy — may soon play a powerful new role in cancer treatment. Hydralazine, used for over 70 years to manage severe hypertension, has shown remarkable potential in stopping the growth of aggressive brain tumours, according to new research by the University of Pennsylvania published in Science Advances.
For decades, doctors have used hydralazine without fully understanding how it works at the molecular level. That mystery has now been solved.
“Hydralazine is one of the earliest vasodilators ever developed, and it remains a first-line treatment for pre-eclampsia. It came from a ‘pre-target’ era of drug discovery,” said Kyosuke Shishikura, physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.
Researchers have discovered that the drug directly targets a crucial enzyme — 2-aminoethanethiol dioxygenase (ADO) — which acts as a biochemical switch controlling how blood vessels tighten in response to falling oxygen levels. ADO acts like an “alarm bell,” activating in seconds to help cancer cells survive in low-oxygen environments.
The team found that hydralazine binds to ADO and shuts it down, effectively silencing the alarm that lets tumour cells adapt and grow.
This breakthrough also reveals a previously unknown link between hypertensive pregnancy disorders and brain cancer biology.
“Pre-eclampsia has affected generations of women in my own family. Understanding hydralazine’s mechanism offers a path to safer, more selective treatments for pregnancy-related hypertension,” said Meghan Matthews, Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Penn.
Beyond pregnancy care, the findings could lead to the development of improved, targeted therapies for brain cancer — one of the most difficult cancers to treat.
“It is rare that an old cardiovascular drug ends up teaching us something new about the brain, but these unusual links may hold the key to new solutions,” Matthews added.
The discovery marks a major step in reimagining a 70-year-old drug — not just as a lifesaver for expecting mothers, but possibly as a future weapon against one of the deadliest forms of cancer.