A joint research team has found a mechanism for applying statins, a widely used hyperlipidemia treatment, to treat KRAS (kirsten rat sarcoma virus) mutant cancer.

To find the method, the team -- led by Dr. Kim In-san, head of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Theragnosis Research Center, and Professor Cho Yong-beom of Samsung Medical Center -- administered an anticancer drug and statin intravenously to a tumor-induced animal model.

Statins selectively killed KRAS mutant cancer and released various signals that can activate surrounding immune cells, allowing the body's immune cells to selectively attack cancer by capturing neoantigens from cancer cells and activating T cells.

"Statins also showed anticancer immunotherapeutic efficacy by changing the cancer-immune environment that is resistant to existing immunotherapy," KIST said. "The research team confirmed the possibility of a drug repositioning strategy based on statins, used mainly to lower blood cholesterol levels, for effectively treating KRAS mutant cancer."

For statin to become a successful drug repositioning case, researchers need to find its optimal use through additional clinical studies in the future and a method for delivering statins to cancer tissues more effectively. If clinical trials prove to be successful through this process, they will drastically reduce time and cost for developing new drugs and resolve the high medical cost problem related to immunotherapy, according to KIST.

"Statins, a treatment already used in clinical practice, can induce immunogenic death of cancer cells by activating the body's immune system to recognize and remember KRAS mutant cancer as a target," Dr. Kim said. "This can overcome the limitations of existing anticancer immunotherapeutic agents."

The researchers expect statins to become a next-generation anticancer immunotherapeutic agent, Kim added.

Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer has published the result of the study in its latest issue.