The first drug blocks the process called lysosome, which enables cancer cells to reuse key nutrients for survival, and the second drug shut down the pathway used to fix up DNA, according to research published Wednesday in PNAS.
The researchers combined chloroquine, which is used to treat malaria, with more than 500 different inhibitors to see if it could create a response to fight off the disease. They discovered a complementary inhibitor known as a replication stress response inhibitor that then took the next step.