HIV Drug Might Fight Cancer

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In the trial, patients are already receiving higher doses with no apparent problem, Dennis said.

"If nelfinavir is proven effective in fighting cancer, it would, most likely, be used in combination with other cancer drugs," Dennis said.

One expert thinks this finding could be an important advance in cancer treatment.

"If it is proven that the toxicity levels are manageable in humans, it's going to be a great thing," said Charles Saxe, a scientific program director at the American Cancer Society. "Being able to get these drugs faster to patients by crossing over from one disease to another is going to be a big help."

Saxe noted that nelfinavir's ability to fight cancer in humans still needs to be proven. "But if they are right, and they can keep toxicity at reasonable levels, and they can show an effect at doses HIV patients can handle, that would be really exciting," he said.

In other cancer news, National Cancer Institute researchers report that they have found an extract of the skin of muscadine grapes (MSKE) can cause prostate cancer cells to die without affecting normal cells, according to a report in the Sept. 1 issue of Cancer Research.

The lead researcher noted this extract does not contain significant amounts of resveratrol, another grape skin component that has been linked to preventing the growth of prostate cancer.

"These results show that MSKE may have potent anti-tumor activities in the lab that differ from the effects of resveratrol. Further studies of MSKE will be necessary to determine if this extract has potential as a chemopreventive or therapeutic agent," Dr. Jeffrey E. Green, chief of the Transgenic Oncogenesis and Genomics Section at the Center for Cancer Research, said in a statement.

And in other HIV news, a study in the August issue of AIDS Patient Care and STDs, researchers found that one-fourth of HIV patients feel stigmatized by their doctors.

Most of the patients who felt that way were low-income minorities with poor access to care.

"Whether or not it is actual stigmatization is hard to measure, because it's coming from the patients that we interviewed," lead researcher Janni J. Kinsler, from the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a statement. "The point is that these people feel that way, and that's bad enough, because they're less likely to seek the care they need."

More information

For more on cancer, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.