Researchers believe that administering aspirin to patients suffering from an aggressive form of breast cancer may enhance their chances of survival. They hope that this inexpensive and widely available pain reliever could save many lives when combined with standard breast cancer treatment, as this is the first clinical study testing whether aspirin can make tumors more sensitive to immunotherapy drugs in triple-negative breast cancer.
A previous review of 118 studies covering 18 different types of cancer found that patients taking aspirin for other health reasons had a 20 percent better chance of survival. Laboratory experiments also showed that combining immunotherapy with aspirin helped control tumor growth in mice more successfully than immunotherapy alone. Dr. Anne Armstrong from the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester will test the drug Avelumab for immunotherapy alongside aspirin and without it, before patients undergo surgery and chemotherapy.
If the results are positive, this may lead to further trials on women with incurable secondary triple-negative breast cancer, where cancer cells that began in the breast spread to other parts of the body, according to the British Daily Mail newspaper.
Dr. Armstrong, a consultant medical oncologist, stated, "Our previous research has indicated that aspirin may make certain types of immunotherapy more effective by preventing cancer from producing substances that weaken the immune response. Anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin could hold the key to increasing the efficacy of immunotherapy when used simultaneously."
She added, "The prospect of using a drug like aspirin is exciting because it is widely available and inexpensive to produce. We hope that our trial will demonstrate that when combined with immunotherapy, aspirin can enhance its effects and may ultimately provide a new safe method for treating breast cancer."
