BioCentury
ARTICLE | Distillery Therapeutics

Therapeutics: Cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1); COX-2

November 5, 2015 8:00 AM UTC

Patient sample and mouse studies combining COX-1 and/or COX-2 inhibitors with immunotherapies could help treat cancer. In tumor samples from patients with cutaneous melanoma, levels of COX-2 mRNA correlated positively with levels of inflammatory factors associated with tumor promotion, such as interleukin-6 (IL-6) and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF; CSF3), and correlated negatively with factors associated with cytotoxic immune responses, such as CD8A (p32; CD8) and chemokine CXC motif ligand 10 (CXCL10; IP-10). In a mouse model of melanoma, a mAb against programmed cell death 1 (PD-1; PDCD1; CD279) plus COX-1/COX-2 inhibition with aspirin or COX-2 inhibition with Celebrex celecoxib decreased tumor growth and increased survival compared with anti-PD-1 mAb alone. Next steps could include testing the effects of COX-1 and COX-2 inhibitors in combination with other cancer immunotherapies...