Nature Communications (Apr 2019)

Felodipine induces autophagy in mouse brains with pharmacokinetics amenable to repurposing

  • Farah H. Siddiqi,
  • Fiona M. Menzies,
  • Ana Lopez,
  • Eleanna Stamatakou,
  • Cansu Karabiyik,
  • Rodrigo Ureshino,
  • Thomas Ricketts,
  • Maria Jimenez-Sanchez,
  • Miguel Angel Esteban,
  • Liangxue Lai,
  • Micky D. Tortorella,
  • Zhiwei Luo,
  • Hao Liu,
  • Emmanouil Metzakopian,
  • Hugo J. R. Fernandes,
  • Andrew Bassett,
  • Eric Karran,
  • Bruce L. Miller,
  • Angeleen Fleming,
  • David C. Rubinsztein

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09494-2
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 14

Abstract

Read online

A key challenge is to find/re-purpose approved drugs that could be used in humans to induce autophagy-associated clearance of neurodegenerative proteins. Here, authors demonstrate that felodipine, an anti-hypertensive drug, can induce autophagy and clear a variety of aggregated neurodegenerative disease-associated proteins in mouse brains at plasma concentrations similar to those that would be seen in humans taking the drug.