(Discover) – Learn how uncovering the biochemistry of a long-established blood pressure drug could make it eligible to treat brain tumors.

A 70-year-old medical mystery around a critical blood-pressure medication, hydralazine, was finally solved. Not only do scientists now understand how it works on a molecular level — which offers important clues to help improve the drug chemically for patients with hypertension disorders or for treating preeclampsia during pregnancy — it also holds potential to stop brain tumors from growing.

A collaboration between universities across the U.S. outlines in a study published in Science Advances how cells from the most aggressive form of brain cancer treated with hydralazine became dormant. This shows that sometimes, instead of inventing novel treatments from scratch, we just have to look at what we already have from a different angle. (Read More)