A study funded by Cancer Research UK, meant to address potential new treatment for both breast and ovarian cancer, wound up benefitting patients who are plagued with difficult-to-treat non-small cell lung cancer.

The drugs, known as PARP inhibitors, proved successful in about half the non small-cell lung cancer patients who took them, destroying the lung cancer cells used to repair DNA. Healthy tissue, however, is left unscathed with PARP inhibitors, reports an article in The Information Daily.

This is an unexpected finding, say researchers at London’s Institute of Cancer Research, and one that they’re proud to have submitted to the cancer journal Oncogene for its current issue, which will be published this week.

Lung cancer, in general, is responsible for about 20 percent of all cancer deaths in the United Kingdom and about 15 percent in the United States. The high mortality rate has made treating lung cancers of all types very frustrating for oncologists who are faced with patients who have a continuously poor prognosis and short life expectancy.

Study author Dr Chris Lord explained, “Lung cancer is hard to treat and unfortunately has very poor survival – so there’s an urgent need to find new treatments. Our research opens up an exciting new route, by showing how we could repurpose drugs originally designed for use against other forms of cancer.”

Scientists find similar struggles with cancers like mesothelioma, a rare form of the disease that attacks about 2,000-3,000 Americans each year. Historically, the disease has responded poorly to most treatments, including chemotherapy. Researchers are consistently trying to find new and better treatments for the disease.

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