Huntsman Cancer Institute has been awarded $12 million to find a drug that everyone can take to lower the risk of colon cancer, on par with taking aspirin to prevent a heart attack.
"People would rather [take a drug] than have colonoscopy screening," said Randall Burt, Huntsman Cancer's senior director of prevention and outreach.
He is leading a research team looking for better prevention and treatment therapies for the second-leading cancer killer in the United States.
The money was awarded by the National Cancer Institute.
HCI will be enrolling 100 people who have a 100 percent risk of developing colon cancer, due to a specific genetic mutation. They will take a chemotherapy drug along with an anti-inflammatory to see whether the drugs will prevent cancer.
Today, when such patients are identified, their colons are removed before they get cancer.
If the drugs work, the study could then include others at a high risk of colon cancer due to a family history. Eventually, the findings might apply to everyone, as long as the drugs cause no side effects.
Using chemotherapy as prevention "is a fairly new concept," Burt said. "I expect it will be a major therapy in medicine over the next few years as we find agents that can be safely given to people who have increased risk."
The initial target of the drug study is people who have inherited mutations in a gene that prevents tumors from forming, called the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC).
Researchers also will study what goes wrong when the APC mutates in mice and zebra fish, with the goal of finding ways to correct it.
Most people who have colon cancer -- 85 percent -- have a mutation in the APC gene.
