The number of studies that show that the benefits of taking aspirin are far beyond the relief of punctual pains, such as headaches and joint pain, and the prevention of cardiovascular diseases – the active substance of … Aspirin is the usual ‘acetylsalicylic acid’, an inhibitor of platelet aggregation, so it prevents the formation of blood thrombi. In fact, there are more and more evidence that suggests that aspirin consumption also reduces the risk of cancer.
But so far it was unknown how or why the aspirin had that protective effect against cancer.
The explanation is provided by British researchers in a study published in the magazine ‘Nature‘which reveals the mechanism that explains how aspirin could reduce the metastasis of some types of cancer by stimulating the immune system.
The study has found that aspirin is able to reduce the appearance of metastasis in mice, allowing the activation of T lymphocytes capable of recognizing tumor cells. The results show that, in several different mouse cancer models, breast, colon and melanoma cancer, aspirin treated showed a lower metastasis rate in other organs, such as lungs and liver, compared to unrelated mice.
Know the mechanism, write the researchers of the Cambridge Universitywill support the ongoing clinical trials and could lead to the specific use of aspirin to prevent the propagation of certain types susceptible to cancer and the development of more effective medications to prevent metastases.
Now, scientists warn that, in some people, aspirin can have serious side effects and clinical trials are being carried out to determine how to use it safely and effectively to prevent the spread of cancer, so people should consult their doctor before starting to take it.
Fortuitous finding
The previous background indicated that those who take aspirine daily in low doses have a reduction in the spread of some types of cancer, such as breast, intestine and prostate, which has given rise to ongoing clinical trials. However, until now it was not known exactly how aspirin could prevent metastasis.
And all thanks to a fortuitous finding.
The team was investigating the metastasis process, because, although cancer begins in a place, 90% of cancer deaths occur when cancer spreads to other parts of the body.
They wanted to better understand how the immune system responds to metastasis, because when individual cancer cells separate from the tumor of origin and spread to another part of the body they are especially vulnerable to immune attack. The immune system can recognize and kill these solitary cancer cells with greater efficacy than cancer cells Within larger origin tumors, which have often developed an environment that suppresses the immune system.
They analyzed 810 genes in mice and discovered 15 that had an effect on cancer metastasis. In particular, they discovered that the mice that lacked a gene that produces a protein called Arhgef1 had less metastases of several primary cancers in the lungs and liver. ARHGEF1 suppresses an immune cell type called T cell, which can recognize and kill metastatic cancer cells.
To develop treatments that took advantage of this discovery they needed to find a way for medications to act on it.
And so they reached aspirin, which reduces the production TXA2, a coagulation factor, which activates the T cells of the immune system.
Despite the advances in cancer treatment, he explains Rahul Roychoudhuriwhich directed the study, “many patients with early cancers receive treatments, such as the surgical removal of the tumor, who have the potential to be healing, but then fall due to the eventual growth of micrometastases: cancer cells that have been sown in other parts of the body, but remain in a latent state.”
Thus, he adds, while most immunotherapies develop to treat metastatic cancer patients, “when cancer spreads for the first time there is a single therapeutic window window in which cancer cells are particularly vulnerable to immune attack.”
Another authors, Jie Yang, considers that aspirin, or other medications that could point to this route, “have the potential to be less expensive than antibody -based therapies and, therefore, more accessible worldwide.”
The step to pending humans
In statements a Science Media CenterÁngel Lanas, scientific director of the Institute of Health Research of Aragon (IIS Aragón), highlights the importance of this research to open new therapeutic options related to immunotherapy, although it points out the complexity of medicine in humans. In this same line Ramón Salazar is manifested, Head of Medical Oncology at the ICOwho mentions the limitation of preclinical research, since the results in animal models do not always apply to the human being. In addition, remember that in previous trials with aspirin in colon and breast cancer no improvements in survival were observed.
In the future, researchers plan to help translate their work into a possible clinical practice collaborating with professor Ruth Langley, from the MRC clinical trial unit at the University College in Londonwho directs the clinical trial Add-Aspirin to find out if aspirin can stop or delay the reappearance of early cancers.
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