Dually Efficacious Medicine Against Fibrosis and Cancer

Abstract

Although there is a contemporary consensus of managing a severe disease with multi-targeted approach-based therapeutic combinations, it should not be ignored that certain patho-biological pathways are shared by distinct medical conditions and can be exploited to develop an exceptional type of medication conferring a dual efficacy. This article thus presents a spectrum of emerging molecular targets that substantially contribute to the pathogenesis of both fibrotic and neoplastic disorders, including kinase activities, cytokine cascades, and protein dynamics among others. Moreover, recently approved therapeutic agents in this regard have been sorted out to corroborate the drug's ability upon targeting each one of these molecular pathways to treat fibrosis and cancer simultaneously. It not only streamlines an overlapping mechanistic profile in the pathogenesis across these two medical conditions, but also inspires clinicians and pharmaceutical innovation to tackle concomitant diseases, such as fibrosis and cancer, with an optimally efficacious medication.

Keywords: cancer; dual efficacy; fibrosis.