COX Inhibitors in Broad Role in Cancer Prevention And Treatment
Envision the very slippery slope we tread with this one, with the pharmaceutical companies wringing their hands and drooling at the mere prospect. Recall how often we talk about inflammation as a contributor to just about every chronic disease known to man. So is it any big shocker when a drug designed to lower one pathway of inflammation lowers the risk of one of these chronic diseases? Of course not. And recall also that there are literally hundreds of natural ways to lower your overall inflammatory burden without drugs…
American Cancer Society Science Writers Seminar Cyclooxygenase inhibitors may not only have the potential to reduce precancerous colon polyps, they may also play a role in slowing the development of many other cancers, according to a presentation Tuesday at the American Cancer Society Science Writers Seminar. Dr. Ernest Hawk of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland said it may be possible to intervene at every stage, from pre-invasive lesions to advanced cancers, in a broad range of organs. “Cyclooxygenase-2 appears to be overexpressed, and appears to correlate very tightly with carcinogenesis in a number of target organs — really, most every target organ we’ve seen so far: head and neck cancer, bladder cancer, colon cancer, pancreatic, breast, prostate,” Dr. Hawk said. “And I’ll note that there is additional work suggesting that overexpression exists among almost every other tumor, in both animal models as well as [in] human settings.” According to Dr. Hawk, more than a half-dozen COX-2 inhibitors are currently under investigation for anticancer effects. Expanded studies of the most well-developed COX-2 inhibitor, celecoxib, are being performed by the National Cancer Institute and the pharmaceutical manufacturer Pharmacia, he said. “We have a trial here that will look at tackling cyclooxygenase at an earlier step in familial adenomatous polyposis patients…before the flagrant phenotypic manifestation of hundreds of adenomas in the colon,” he explained. “We’re going to see if we can use this drug to delay phenotypic expression, and so, thereby, potentially…delay the time of surgery so that these children and young adults could live with their colons for a longer period of time.” Dr. Hawk said that researchers are also excited by animal and laboratory studies indicating synergistic effects of COX inhibitors with statins and other agents, which might provide stronger anticancer effects while preventing serious side effects