News From Transplant Week of March 3, 2002 / Vol. 3 No. 9

 

New Hope for Treating Cytomegalovirus in Transplant Recipients
 

Princeton University molecular biology professor Thomas Shenk said a new study suggests that painkillers similar to aspirin may someday be useful in treating the human cytomegalovirus, an infection common in organ transplant recipients.

The virus, a member of the herpes family which generally does not cause symptoms in a normal, healthy adult, is one of the major causes of diseases and death in immunosuppressed transplant recipients.

The current treatment for HCMV is ganciclovir, a an effective but highly toxic drug that can only be administered in doses too small to be fully effective.

"For people who are immunocompromised, such as people with AIDS or people who are transplant recipients, this virus is a big problem," said Shenk.

In the Princeton study, researchers reduced the replication of cytomegalovirus by a factor of more than 100 by treating cultured cells in the laboratory with the over-the-counter drug indomethacin (Indocin), which Shenk said is "related to aspirin, but is a different compound that at high dosages inhibits HCMV."

Aspirin and indomethacin are both inhibitors of COX-2, an enzyme that is responsible for producing prostaglandin E2 (PEG2).

"When COX-2 is blocked, it then quite substantially blocks the growth of HCMV," Shenk reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "What we proved is that PGE2 is what's essential for the virus to reproduce.

"We're interested in exploring a normal inhibitor that we can combine with ganciclovir to be more effective," Shenk said. "That's the next thing to start exploring."

Other sources: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Princeton University