New York, March 10 (IANS): Viagra does not only enhance sexual performance but may also, when combined with new drugs, treat certain cancers and neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, say researchers.

The team from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond found that an experimental compound derived from the drug Celebrex interacts with Viagra to reduce levels of chaperone proteins.

Chaperone proteins are promising new targets for drugs to treat cancer and Alzheimer's disease and for novel antiviral drugs and antibiotics.

"Drugs like Celebrex and Viagra are readily available and generally recognised as safe. This study may lead to new applications of these relatively new medicines," said Carol Shoshkes Reiss, Editor-in-Chief of the journal DNA and Cell Biology that published the study.

The potential impact, if the experiments described are translatable to human disease, could be paradigm-shifting.

"The potential applications are serious antibiotic resistant infections, chemotherapy-resistant cancers and neuro-degenerative disease ranging from Parkinson's disease to Huntington's or Alzheimer's disease," explained Reiss, also professor at New York University.

The article by researchers Laurence Booth, Jane Roberts and Paul Dent from Virginia Commonwealth University detailed a comprehensive discussion of the Chaperone protein and the published evidence for its role in various human diseases.