AACR: Celebrex May Affect Colon and Prostate Cancer
TUESDAY, April 15 (HealthDay News) -- Celecoxib may be a safe and effective chemopreventive strategy for some high-risk colorectal adenoma patients and also may play a role in preventing the progression of prostate cancer, according two studies presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in San Diego.
In the first study, Monica M. Bertagnolli, M.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and colleagues randomly assigned 639 high-risk patients to receive either celecoxib or placebo. After three years, the researchers found that patients receiving 200 mg of celecoxib twice daily had 33 percent fewer adenomas and 57 percent fewer advanced lesions, and that patients receiving 400 mg of celecoxib twice daily had 45 percent fewer adenomas and 66 percent fewer advanced lesions than patients who received placebo.
In the second study, Xi Zheng, Ph.D., M.D., of Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., and colleagues assessed the effects of celecoxib (Celebrex) and atorvastatin (Lipitor), alone or in combination, on the androgen-independent growth of human prostate cancer LNCaP cells cultured in vitro or grown as xenograft tumors in immunodeficient mice. They found either drug alone inhibited growth and induced apoptosis but that the combination had an even stronger effect.
"The results from our study indicate that a combination of Lipitor and Celebrex may be an effective strategy for the prevention of prostate cancer progression from androgen-dependence to an androgen-independent stage," Zheng and colleagues conclude.
Bertagnolli reports a financial relationship with Pfizer.
