CELEBREX ANTI-INFLAMMATORY CAUSES LIVER CANCER CELLS TO SELF DESTRUCT

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Jeffrey Newman

Celebrex, a commonly used anti-inflmmatory drug causes liver cancer cells to die by reacting with a protein setting off a self destruction chain reaction within the cancer cells according to a new study. A unique data mining/ preditive model was employed before the researchers considered Celebrex, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. It is a Cox-2 inhibitor which means it helps control inflammation by inhibiting an enzyme known as cyclooxygenase-2. It is most often prescribed for treatment of the pain of arthiritis. Chenglong Li, an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy at Ohio State has created a computer simulation to identify optimal drug fragment combination that attach simultaneously to proteins in ways that block the proteins’ functions. This is a unique kind of predictive modeling which works by searching a database of existing federally approved drugs. It was found that the drug celecoxib was structurally similar to a template molecule that he had determined would most effectively bind to STAT3 and inhibit its function. Normally STAT3 is persistently activated in cancer cells. If you have a molecule that loves to stick to STAT3 it will halt its activation, says Li. When STAT3 is halted cellular survival pathways in the cancer cells are blocked and that results in the cancer cells chopping themselves up and self destructing. This research can be seen on line and is slated for print in the journal of Cancer Prevention. The studies were done on cancer cell cultures, in the lab, not on animals or humans. The scientists treated five different kinds of hepatocellular carcinoma cells.