Groundbreaking New Study Reveals That Statins Could Prevent Cancer

A recent study from Mass General Cancer Center reveals that statins might block a pathway involved in cancer development due to chronic inflammation, showing promise in preventing cancers associated with environmental toxins, particularly in the skin and pancreas.

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Research findings show that pitavastatin suppresses skin and pancreatic cancers by inhibiting interleukin-33.

A recent study conducted by researchers at Mass General Cancer Center has found that statins, which are widely used to reduce cholesterol, might inhibit a specific pathway linked to cancer development caused by chronic inflammation. These results were reported in...... 

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“Chronic inflammation is a major cause of cancer worldwide,” said senior author Shawn Demehri, MD, PhD, a principal investigator at the Center for Cancer Immunology and Cutaneous Biology Research Center of Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School. “We investigated the mechanism by which environmental toxins drive the initiation of cancer-prone chronic inflammation in the skin and pancreas,” says Demehri, who is also the Bob and Rita Davis Family MGH Research Scholar 2023-2028.

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Research Methods and Findings

Demehri and his colleagues’ study relied on cell lines, animal models, human tissue samples, and epidemiological data. The group’s cell-based experiments demonstrated that environmental toxins (such as exposure to allergens and chemical irritants) activate two connected signaling pathways called the TLR3/4 and TBK1-IRF3 pathways. This activation leads to the production of the interleukin-33 (IL-33) protein, which stimulates inflammation in the skin and pancreas that can contribute to the development of cancer.

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When they screened a library of U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved drugs, the researchers found that a statin, pitavastatin, effectively suppresses IL-33 expression by blocking the activation of the TBK1-IRF3 signaling pathway. In mice, pitavastatin suppressed environmentally-induced inflammation in the skin and the pancreas and prevented the development of inflammation-related pancreatic cancers.

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