Covert Inflammation May Trigger Many Forms of Cancer

Covert Inflammation May Trigger Many Forms of Cancer
by Liz Droge-Young, ucsf.edu, 7 July 2016

A previously unidentifiable type of low-grade inflammation may explain why common anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin have shown promise against some types of cancer – even when patients don’t display typical signs of inflammation.

So-called "parainflammation," seen in orange on tissue grown in culture from a mouse intestinal tumor, could interact with gene mutations to trigger certain types of cancer. On the left, normal mouse gut tissue does not express the signature gene; in the middle, tissue harbors parainflammation; on the right, parainflammation nearly disappears from the tumor after treatment with a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug similar to aspirin. Image courtesy of Dvir Aran/Butte lab

A team led by researchers in the labs of Atul Butte, MD, PhD, director of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences and a professor of pediatrics at UC San Francisco, and Yinon Ben-Neriah, MD, PhD, a professor of immunology and cancer research at the Lautenberg Center of Immunology of Hebrew University Medical School in Jerusalem, identified the role of a subtle form of inflammation in human and mouse cancer cells. According to the authors, this so-called “parainflammation” may explain how a number of different forms of cancer begin.

Read more »