Overcoming chemotherapy resistance in leukemia with a diarrhea drug from Merck

Although acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is treatable with chemotherapy, patients often become resistant to it. Researchers at King’s College in London said they’ve discovered a way to potentially reverse chemo resistance in some patients with AML—and they found it in an unlikely place.

Merck’s drug Dificid, used to treat Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea, sensitized AML to treatment with the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin and improved survival in mouse models of treatment-resistant AML, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.