Aspirin against cancer
Scientists: aspirin significantly enhances the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy
RIA News Experiments on mice have shown that taking regular aspirin can several times increase the effectiveness of cancer drugs that "incite" the immune system against tumor cells, according to an article published in the journal Cell (Zelenay et al., Cyclooxygenase-Dependent Tumor Growth through Evasion of Immunit).
"The authors of this study conducted experiments on mice, and therefore we will have to wait some time before we can use this technique to treat cancer patients. But we are very pleased that scientists have found a very simple way to greatly improve the effectiveness of therapy in the fight against a large number of types of cancer," said Peter Johnson, director of the British Cancer Research Center in Manchester, whose words are quoted by the press service of the organization (Aspirin could hold the key to supercharged cancer immunotherapy – VM).This unusual property of aspirin was discovered by the British geneticist Santiago Zelenay from the Francis Crick Institute in London and his colleagues, who tried to uncover the reason why cancer immunotherapy – an increasingly popular method of fighting tumors by the forces of the body itself – sometimes does not work.
Studying the work of cancer cells in such tumors that are "invisible" to the immune system, the authors of the article noticed that they had one thing in common – they secreted a large amount of the hormone PGE2. This substance plays an important role in the work of the immune system, signaling the onset of inflammatory processes and suppressing the work of so-called T–cells - special immune cells that recognize new pathogens and "remember" their distinctive features.
This fact prompted scientists to a simple but very effective idea – to suppress the synthesis of PGE2 during immunotherapy. The easiest way to do this is to take a large dose of aspirin, whose antipyretic effect is based on suppressing the activity of COX enzymes that collect PGE2 molecules.
The diagram from the article in the Cell – VM.Guided by this idea, biologists raised several mice, into whose body they transplanted small fragments of melanoma, skin cancer.
When the tumors took root and began to grow, scientists injected a set of antibodies and a large amount of aspirin into the rodents' bodies.
As this experience has shown, the addition of an antipyretic dramatically increased the activity of immune cells in the vicinity of the tumor and helped them learn to recognize cancer cells and destroy them. After a while, the body of almost all the mice destroyed the melanoma, despite the fact that it remained invisible to their immune system until the introduction of aspirin and antibodies.
Scientists have achieved a similar effect in the fight against rectal cancer and other types of tumors. Zelenay and his colleagues hope that the human body will react to aspirin in a similar way. It is hoped that the structure of PGE2, COX enzymes and the nature of the hormone's interaction with immune cells almost do not differ in mice and humans.
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08.09.2015