Blood pressure medication combined with chemotherapy could reduce spread in triple negative breast cancer

A new international study led by Monash University has, for the first time, identified that beta-blockers could significantly enhance the therapeutic effect of anthracycline chemotherapy in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) by reducing metastasis. Anthracyclines are a class of drugs used in chemotherapy to treat many cancers, including TNBC. Researchers from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) have previously shown in a clinical trial that beta-blockers (most commonly used to manage blood pressure) are linked with less cancer spread. However, until now, it was unclear how beta-blockers would interact with common cancer treatments. In this new study, published in Science Translational Medicine, the MIPS team used mouse models of cancer and analysed large-scale patient clinical data, in collaboration with the Cancer Registry of Norway, to discover that anthracycline chemotherapy on its own, in the absence of a beta-blocker, induces nerve growth in tumours. However, adding a beta-blocker to chemotherapy inhibited nerve fibre activity in tumours and stopped the cancer from coming back after treatment. MIPS Research Fellow and the study’s lead author, Dr Aeson Chang, said the findings reveal an unanticipated insight into why chemotherapy treatment does not always work as it should. “We set out to build on previous studies that have shown beta-blockers can halt the stress response experienced by cancer patients at the time of diagnosis and stop the cancer from spreading.