UK scientists studying how cancers spread have found aspirin may help prevent metastases (secondary tumours) by boosting the body’s immune response.
The researchers at Cambridge University, whose study was published in Nature, found that in mice with melanoma, aspirin acted on platelets, making them produce less of clotting factor thromboxane A2 (TXA2) that suppresses immune T cells. With less TXA2 suppressing them, these T cells can then destroy any spreading cancer cells.
Lead author professor Rahul Roychoudhuri told medicalnewstoday.com: ‘When cancer first spreads, there’s a unique therapeutic window of opportunity when cancer cells are particularly vulnerable to immune attack. We hope therapies that target this window of vulnerability will have tremendous scope in preventing recurrence in patients with early cancer at risk of recurrence.’
More than 90 percent of cancer deaths happen after cancer has spread to another part of the body.
Co-author Dr Jie Yang said: ‘It was a eureka moment when we found TXA2 was the molecular signal that activates this suppressive effect on T cells. Before this, we had not been aware of the implication of our findings in understanding the anti-metastatic activity of aspirin. It was an entirely unexpected finding which sent us down quite a different path of enquiry than we had anticipated.’
Yang emphasised the potential of this finding, noting ‘aspirin, or other drugs that could target this pathway, have the potential to be less expensive than antibody-based therapies, and therefore more accessible globally.’
However, the researchers did caution aspirin can have side effects and may not be suitable for everyone; commonly aspirin can cause stomach or gut irritation, nausea and indigestion.
Clinical trials in people are now under way, with the Cambridge researchers collaborating with Professor Ruth Langley at University College London, who is leading the ‘Add-Aspirin’ clinical trial to find out if aspirin can stop or delay the return of early stage cancers.
