The parenthetical on the title is a little deceiving. Not sure if it was in the or original or if it was added. I am sure it was innocent of added.
The article shows that HCQ does not treat refractory CA. It does suggest that HCQ may either potentiate cisplatin. If I recall cisplatin is a rare earth alkaloid with a heavy metal. So it may stand to reason that HCQ which had a proposed MOS of being an ionophore allowing zinc fo cross the viral envelop in CoVId thereby leading to viral death did not show the results people hoped for.
However in highly metabolic cells such as CA it may be a better treatment as an adjuvant.
Interesting study to come.
I went to the actual study, and this, I believe, is where it conclusively shows it's not only “potentiating:”
Next, we established a PDX from a patient who had been treated with cisplatin-based therapy but developed treatment resistance. This PDX was found to natively express a high level of TMEM16A. We treated mice bearing this PDX with either vehicle control or cisplatin with or without HCQ, skipping the HCQ alone group because of the abundance of data indicating HCQ as a safe drug in vitro as well as CAM experiments. HCQ treatment restored sensitivity to cisplatin in this PDX (Fig. 6C), suggesting that lysosomal inhibition potentiates cisplatin toxicity in vivo. To determine cellular damage inflicted through HCQ, we used phospho-histone H2AX, a marker for DNA double-strand break. Immunohistochemistry of PDX tissue stained with pH2AX shows significantly increased positively stained bodies in the combination group, further supporting our hypothesis that HCQ sensitizes the tumor tissue to cisplatin-induced death (Fig. 6D).
Yes, it does also potentiate it, as described further below, though.
Thoughts? I always appreciate your insight.