A drug currently used in cancer treatment may hold the key to curing or stopping the progression of two invariably fatal lung diseases, an animal study has found.

In an animal study, University of Georgia researchers found the drug triciribine may reverse or halt the progression of pulmonary fibrosis and pulmonary hypertension.

Pulmonary fibrosis occurs when lung tissue becomes scarred, leading to loss of lung function and reduced oxygen supply to the blood. Pulmonary hypertension involves an increase of blood pressure in the arteries of the lung that can lead to heart failure.

Pulmonary fibrosis affects nearly 130,000 people in the U.S., with about 48,000 new cases diagnosed annually. Pulmonary hypertension is rare — with only about 15 to 50 cases per million people. But the total number of deaths attributed to the disease increased by more than 40 percent in the U.S. between 1980 and 2002, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The researchers used mice engineered to mimic the disease in humans to study the effect of triciribine, which is used in chemotherapy to inhibit production of a protein called Akt1.

They waited until mice began to show symptoms of disease and then injected them with triciribine once daily for a period of three weeks. The characteristic scarring and loss of lung function was slowed in every mouse, and the lung tissue in some began to return to normal.

As there is currently no definitive cause known for these diseases, the researchers believe their study shows that Akt1 may be responsible for causing them as well.