Ángel Lanas
Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Zaragoza, head of the Digestive Service of the Hospital Clínico Universitario Lozano Blesa of Zaragoza and scientific director of the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Aragón (IIS Aragón)
I think the study is excellent, as it explores a pathogenic pathway related to metastasis and the effect of aspirin (aspirin, ASA) that, to my knowledge, had not been explored in such depth and in such a complete manner at the experimental level. The study is of high quality; otherwise it would not have been published in Nature.
We have been investigating the effect of ASA on digestive cancer and, in particular, colon cancer for many years. We have made interesting interesting contributions with some of the authors of this paper. We have known from the epidemiological point of view, for many years, that people who take ASA daily have a lower risk of cancer and a lower mortality associated with cancer. Relevantly, we knew that taking ASA, even after the diagnosis of cancer, was associated with a lower risk of metastasis. The suspicion that this effect was platelet-dependent and possibly related to immunity has always been present, but the mechanism was not clear beyond plausible hypotheses. This work represents an important step towards confirming this hypothesis and opens up new therapeutic avenues associated with immunotherapy, which is providing such good results in many tumors.
As always, it should be noted that complexity in humans is greater and less controllable than in experimental conditions. We are clearly moving towards personalized medicine in which cancer treatment will be individualized. It is quite possible that this very interesting effect will be seen only in some types of cancer that express a specific molecular profile that will have to be better defined.