Sydney, Aug 14 - People taking medication for schizophrenia seem to have lower cancer rates, which has prompted new research on whether anti-psychotic drugs could help treat some major cancers. The results are very promising as these mind drugs are many times more effective at killing cancer cells than drugs currently in use.

For instance, anti-psychotic drug pimozide, found to be the most lethal of six such drugs tested by University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the University of Queensland researchers, kills lung, breast and brain cancer cells in in-vitro lab experiments.

The researchers are also investigating the effects of these drugs on cells derived from drug-resistant childhood cancers where current chemotherapy has failed.

Rapidly-dividing cancer cells require cholesterol and lipids to grow and the researchers suspect that pimozide kills cancer cells by blocking the synthesis or movement of cholesterol and lipid in cancer cells.

To test the idea that pimozide acts by disrupting cholesterol synthesis, researchers combined pimozide with mevastatin, a drug that inhibits cholesterol production in cells.