Pain Killer for the Killer Cancer

In particular, the widely-used arthritis drug (also known as the COX-2 inhibitor celecoxib) has led to a 60% reduction of non-melanoma skin cancers – some of the most common cancers in the US with nearly 2 million diagnoses a year.

“For individuals who are at very high risk of skin cancer, this may be a method to reduce the number of new tumors they develop,” says study author Alice Pentland from the University of Rochester Medical Center, “despite the drug’s known side effects.” (These include ulcers and heart attack.)

In a clinical trial with 240 patients for over 11 months, the researchers found that celecoxib slowed or stopped actinic keratoses – flat, dry, scaly patches on sun-exposed areas like the arms, scalp, nose and back of the neck – from becoming full-fledged tumors.

Celecoxib didn’t prevent new actinic keratoses, but the number of non-melanoma skin cancers was lower in these patients than in control patients, all of whom started with 10 to 40 of these ‘premalignant precursors.’

There are no Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved agents for the prevention of non-melanoma skin cancers, although sunscreens are widely recommended for this purpose, according to study author Craig Elmetsof the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “However, even sunscreens are only modestly effective,” he adds. “The demonstration that celecoxib can prevent these common malignancies heralds an entirely new approach for the prevention of these common malignancies.”

In the future, a combination of protective measures, like sunscreens and hats, along with therapies like COX inhibitors may be used to decrease the incidence of skin cancer.

The direct treatment of these cancers is estimated to exceed $1.4 billion annually. And unlike many other malignancies, their incidences are increasing, especially in young people.

The study was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and was jointly funded by Pfizer (the maker of Celebrex) and the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health.