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In 2006, researcher Hwyda Arafat, M.D., Ph.D., reported that common blood pressure medications might help block the spread of pancreatic cancer. Now, Dr. Arafat, assistant professor of surgery at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson in Philadelphia, has been awarded a prestigious Research Scholar Grant from the American Cancer Society (ACS) to continue that work.

The grant, which begins July 1, 2007, is for approximately $720,000 for four years. It is part of an ACS program to support investigator-initiated research in basic, preclinical, clinical and epidemiologic research.

Dr. Arafat will use the award to delve into the scientific basis behind the potential use of high blood pressure medications as anticancer drugs. In 2006, she and her co-workers showed in laboratory studies that two types of pressure-lowering drugs – ACE inhibitors and AT1R blockers – may help reduce the development of tumor-feeding blood vessels, a process called angiogenesis. Last month, she reported her team’s most recent mechanistic findings in two presentations to the Pancreas Club and the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract in Washington, D.C., part of Digestive Disease Week.

Her group’s results suggest that such drugs may become part of a novel strategy to control the growth and may even prevent the growth and spread of cancer in susceptible individuals.

She and her research team are planning to continue to examine potential mechanisms behind the findings. She wants to develop an animal model in which human pancreatic cancer development and progression can be followed, while at the same time, also use for studying the effects of high blood pressure medications against the disease.

Eventually, Dr. Arafat says, she would like to see the work move from the laboratory into clinical trials.