First manufactured over a century ago by the pharmaceutical company, Bayer, the drug aspirin stands as one of the oldest over-the-counter pharmaceuticals still in use today.
Originally marketed as a remedy for headaches, mild fever and rheumatism, aspirin has also for the past few decades been widely prescribed among patients to prevent post-operative recurrence of stroke or heart attack, thanks to its blood-thinning properties.
However, aspirin also owes much of its fame to the more recent discovery of what is easily its most intriguing property – its observed tendency to reduce long-term incidence of common malignancies such as gastrointestinal (gut) and prostate cancers by as much as 30 to 50 per cent, if prescribed in small daily doses for at least five years.
The serendipitous discovery of aspirin’s ability to prevent cancer has since triggered numerous scientific studies to better understand how it does so. So far, aspirin is thought to prevent cancer partly by reducing inflammation, thinning the blood (thus reducing the spread of cancer cells in the body) and causing cancer cells to essentially kill themselves by means of programmed cell death, before they can form a full-blown tumour.
The means by which aspirin causes cancer cells (but not normal cells) to kill themselves is an important but poorly understood aspect underlying its cancer-preventive properties, and is still the subject of intense research.
In our own laboratory, headed by Prof. Rena Balzan, we have long been studying the cell death mechanisms underlying aspirin’s cancer-preventive effects, using baker’s yeast as an experimental research model.
Widely used for making bread and beer, yeast cells are also hugely important for scientific research of diseases and of drugs such as aspirin, since they retain the same basic structures and cellular processes as human cells but boast many advantages for research.
Past research work in our laboratory has shown that, in yeast cells that are redox-compromised and less able to cope with oxidative stress (much like early-tumour cancer cells), aspirin targets and causes numerous forms of irreparable damage to cell mitochondria, the power-generating structures in cells, causing cell death. Aspirin-induced stress, cell death and its effects on mitochondrial performance in terms of cellular energy production in yeast are now the focus of our research efforts, currently funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology through the R&I Technology Development Programme (Project R&I-2015-001).
This is being carried out to better understand the mechanisms underlying aspirin’s cancer-preventive effects, and will hopefully contribute to the development of more effective aspirin-like cancer therapies in the future.
Dr Gianluca Farrugia is a post-doctoral researcher working at the Yeast Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Laboratory, Centre for Molecular Medicine and Biobanking, University of Malta.
Did you know?
• At over 2,000 kilometres long, the Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on earth.
• Sound travels about four times faster in water than in air.
• The average person walks the equivalent of five times around the world in a lifetime.
• 20/20 vision means the eye can see normally at 20 feet. 20/15 is better; the eye can see at 20 feet what another eye sees at 15 feet.
• There are eight times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic ocean.
For more trivia see: www.um.edu.mt/think
Sound bites
• We knew chocolate makes us feel good, and here is why. Chocolate contains serotonin. Serotonin, which is the most concentrated of all the neurotransmitters contained in chocolate, is responsible for feelings of well-being and contentment, as well as curbing anxiety and depression.
• Bluetooth is a technology found in your mobile phone or tablet (and many other portable gadgets) which allows your device to connect directly to other electronic equipment. The name for ‘Bluetooth’ was borrowed from the 10th-century, second Viking king of Denmark, King Harald Bluetooth, who was famous for uniting Scandinavia just as this technology was conceived to unite the PC and cellular industries with a short-range wireless link.
• To find out some more interesting science news listen in on Radio Mocha every Monday and Friday at 1pm on Radju Malta 2.