Aspirin Exerts Synergistic Effect with Anti-Fas Stimulation against Colorectal Cancer Stem Cells In Vitro

Abstract

Cancer cells, especially cancer stem cells (CSCs), are known for their therapeutic resistance and ability to induce a cancer relapse even many years after successful treatment. The quest for a novel protocol utilizing some commonly used non-oncologic drugs that would improve patients outcomes seems to be the right solution. Aspirin (ASA) is one of such eminent drugs. Our study demonstrated that ASA may exert synergistic effect with the anti-Fas antibody on CSCs of colorectal cancer cell lines. We found that such compound treatment inhibited the pro-cancerous effect of anti-Fas stimulation and decreased spherogenicity, survival and CD133-positive cells’ count. Additionally, ASA with anti-Fas antibody may have a positive impact on dendritic cells’ functions. Our innovative study explored simultaneous usage of two biologically active compounds which haven’t been considered in such combination to assess their significance in colorectal cancer cell biology.

Keywords

• cancer stem cells
• colorectal cancer
• anti-Fas
• aspirin
• dendritic cells