Academics said the news could make a ‘huge difference’ in the fight against cancer. Laboratory tests show that skin, breast and bowel cancer cells often generate large amounts of the molecule, prostaglandin E2 (PGE2).
But the pioneering study found that aspirin and other members of the ‘Cox inhibitor’ drug family block production of the molecule so that tumours have nowhere to hide.
In mice, combining immunotherapy – which involves using medicines that encourage the immune system to attack cancerous cells – with aspirin or other Cox inhibitors was found to ‘substantially’ slow the growth of bowel and malignant skin cancer.
Professor Caetano Reis e Sousa, who led the team from the Francis Crick Institute in London, said: “We’ve added to the growing evidence that some cancers produce PGE2 as a way of escaping the immune system.
If you can take away cancer cells’ ability to make PGE2, you effectively lift this protective barrier and unleash the full power of the immune system.
Giving patients Cox inhibitors like aspirin at the same time as immunotherapy could potentially make a huge difference to the benefit they get from treatment. “It’s still early work but this could help make cancer immunotherapy even more effective, delivering life-changing results for patients.”
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