One of the oldest drugs in the world may still have new tricks up its sleeve.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge led the research,publishedWednesday in the journal Nature.
Metastasized, or advanced, cancers are especially difficult to treat once they emerge, often leading to death.
Aspirin might unleash the immune system’s ability to recognize and destroy cancers at risk of spreading elsewhere in the body.© RVillalon via Shutterstock
So the team set out to investigate the mechanisms behind this prevention by studying mice.
Specifically, TXA2 appears to suppress cancer-fighting T cells through a protein called ARHGEF1.
The clinical benefit of this cancer prevention may also bemodest at bestor may not apply to everyone equally.
And it could pave the way to other, possibly more effective therapies that work in a similar way.
Our identification of the TXA2-ARHGEF1 pathway provides a target for developing more selective therapies.
Roychoudhuri and his team are already working to develop these next-generation drugs.
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