
Scientists believe that they have discovered how cheap pain reliever could stop aspirin from the spread of cancer.
In animal experiments, they showed that the drug has strengthened the ability of the immune system to fight.
The team at the University of Cambridge said that it is an exciting and sudden discovery that can eventually lead to prescribing cancer patients – but not yet and people are advised not to take the pills themselves.
Regular aspirin comes with risks and experiments are still trying to know patients who are likely to benefit from patients.
Surround data from More than a decade ago People who were already taking daily aspirin showed more likely to survive if they were diagnosed with cancer.
But how?
It appears to focus in a moment of weakness for cancer – when the only cell is separated from the original tumor and tries, like seeds on the wind, to spread elsewhere in the body.
This process is called a malignant tumor and a cause Most deaths From cancer.
Part of our immune defenses – white blood cells called T -cells – can invalidate and destroy deployment cancer while trying to root.
But the study showed that another part of our blood – platelets that usually stop bleeding – were suppressing the T cells and making them more difficult for them to remove cancer.
Aspirin disrupts the platelets and removes their effect on T cells so that they can search for cancer.
Professor Rahul Reoshodori, from the University of Cambridge, told me: “What we discovered is that aspirin might work amazing, by launching the strength of the immune system to recognize cancer and killing cells,” said Professor Rahul Reoshodori, from the University of Cambridge.
He believes that the drug will work better in early arrested cancer and can be used after treatment, such as surgery to help the immune system find any cancer that may actually spread.
Should I take aspirin for cancer?
The most natural question for anyone with cancer is to ask it. Should they take aspirin?
“If you are a patient with cancer, do not hurry to your local pharmacy to buy aspirin yet, but you are actively considering participating in the continuous or coming experiences of aspirin,” says Professor Mangish Revolutions, a surgeon and a cancer researcher at Queen Mary University in London.
He says that the study provided “the missing piece of a panorama puzzle” in understanding how aspirin works, but there are still questions to answer it.
Aspirin can cause serious internal bleeding, including strokes so that the risks must be balanced. It is also not clear whether the effect works for all cancer or just a specific classification. This is still an animal research, so while scientists believe this will be applied in people who will continue to confirm.
Some patients – with Lynch syndrome, increases the risk of cancer – are already present Aspirin.
But it will take the appropriate clinical trials to understand whether more patients will benefit as well.
This is already ongoing. Professor Ruth Langley, of the MRC clinical trial unit at College University, leads ADD-SPIRIN experience To find out if aspirin can stop early stage cancers of the return.
She said that the results of the study were an “important discovery” because it will help work “is likely to benefit from aspirin after the diagnosis of cancer.”
However, I again warned of the dangers of taking aspirin and “always talking to your doctor before starting.”
In the long run, Professor Roychoudhuri is suspected that new drugs will be developed that take the benefits of aspirin, but with fewer risky side effects.
“Urika’s moment”
Discovery, It was published in the Nature magazineIt happened by chance because the scientists did not search for aspirin.
The team in Cambridge was investigating how the cancer immune system responded when it spread.
They used genetically engineering mice and found those that lacked a specific group of genetic instructions that were less likely to obtain a metastatic cancer that spread.
More investigations revealed how these T cells were suppressed and this began to interfere with how aspirin is known to work in the body.
“It was the moment of Urika,” said Dr. Ji Yang, who conducted the research.
“It was a completely unexpected discovery that sent us a completely different path of the investigation from what we expected.”