According to a new study, a simple aspirin can enhance the cancer treatment. The study researched a joint treatment of aspirin and immunotherapy and suggests that the combination can slow down melanoma skin cancer and bowel cancer growth in mice, compared to immunotherapy alone.
According to reports, all United Kingdom hospitals use immunotherapy treatment for some types of cancer like lymphoma and leukemia. The senior group leader at the Francis Crick Institute and study author Professor Caetano Reis e Sousa, declared in a press release that by combining immunotherapy to giving patients COX inhibitors like aspirin at the same time it could potentially make a huge difference to the treatment benefit.
If cancer patients take aspirin at the same time as immunotherapy chances are there it can dramatically boost the effectiveness of the treatment during all stages of cancer, according to the new study results. Aspirin has the effect to effectively lift the protective barrier that has been shielding the cancerous cells from the immune system. The immune system can unleash its full potential once the barrier is down.
The study finds that a simple pill of aspirin combined with immunotherapy could better assist the body battle cancer, the new research has suggested. One of the main findings of this study is that cancers cells produce large quantities of the molecule, which reduces the immune system's regular assault response to tumor cells.
The scientists at London's new Francis Crick Institute explained that their study was based on treating cancer. However, since there is much research on how aspirin may prevent cancer they also studied this possibility. The scientists have found the aspirin raises the possibility of treating cancer through one of its mechanisms of "removing the veil in which cancer cells wrap themselves.
Researchers explain that aspirin and other COX inhibitors can help reviving the immune system of the body by stopping the production of PGE2. According to them, once you stop the cancer cells from producing the PGE2 molecule, the immune system switches back to "kill mode" and attacks the cancer tumor.
Up to date the scientists obtained positive results of the study in mice. Now researchers can do similar studies in humans. The positive results obtained provide a positive step toward cancer research and effective treatment of the disease.
