Breast cancer has potential to be treated with the anti-inflammatory drug celecoxib, which is normally used to treat arthritis and other conditions, according to new research.
The study looked at the effects of taking the drug in 45 patients with primary invasive breast cancer. According to lead researcher Juergen Veeck of Maastricht University Medical Center in the Netherlands, the drug induced an anti-tumor response at the molecular level.
In a statement, UPI quotes Veeck as saying, "this is exciting because it means that a medication already used to treat other diseases may be efficient in the adjuvant treatment of breast cancer as well. We were pleased that the results from our clinical trial largely confirmed the existing data from several pre-clinical studies by showing that COX-2 inhibition leads to changes in cell proliferation, apoptosis and extracellular matrix biology in primary breast cancer tissues."
The research was presented at the IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels.
