New Task: Malaria drug might inhibit some cancers

In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers in Tanzania distributed millions of doses of chloroquine to children as part of a 5-year malaria-prevention project. While the study yielded only mixed results against that disease, the researchers noticed a striking drop in cases of Burkitt’s lymphoma, a blood cancer.

New studies in mice show that chloroquine may indeed prevent Burkitt’s lymphoma and also a rare disease called ataxia telangiectasia that can lead to leukemia.