Aspirin-like drugs help prevent spread of tumors in the body

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDFeb 14 2012

Australian scientists have made a breakthrough which could help in the fight against cancer. The team from Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne has found a link between non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as aspirin, and the ability of tumours to spread in the body. They say that doctors have been aware of the benefits of NSAIDs for many years, but did not fully understand the biological processes involved.

“We've known that tumours actively secrete a range of proteins and compounds, called growth factors, to attract blood and lymphatic vessels from within their immediate vicinity, enabling them to flourish and metastasise, or spread,” senior author Associate Professor Steven Stacker said in a statement. “That's one of the favored modes of spread and of course that spread to regional lymph nodes is very important in terms of prognosis and staging of patients so we believe it is those sort of solid tumors where this principle is likely to apply.” He added that this works in “breast, lung, prostate” tumors “because these tumors do typically spread to regional lymph nodes,” he said.

“In this research we have discovered that a gene (pgdh) links these growth factors to the prostaglandin cellular pathway, the pathway that can cause inflammation and dilation of vessels throughout the body. Basically, the growth factors released by tumours also encourage nearby collecting lymphatic vessels to widen, increasing the capacity for these `supply lines' to act as more effective conduits of cancer spread,” he explained.

“The discovery of this link unlocks a range of potentially powerful new therapies to target this pathway in lymphatic vessels, effectively tightening a tumour's supply lines and restricting the transport of cancer cells to the rest of the body,” Dr Tara Larnezis said in a statement. “The potential is incredibly exciting, as these new and improved drugs could help contain many solid epithelial tumours, including breast and prostate cancer, which affect large numbers of Australian men and women.”

The researchers are hopeful their discovery will lead to an early warning system for tumours before they become unmanageable. The results of the study have been published in an international journal, Cancer Cell.