Can the drug celecoxib help some people avoid colorectal cancer recurrence? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:00 — 1.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS

For people who’ve had colorectal cancer, celecoxib, a commonly prescribed medicine for pain, may help avoid disease recurrence, a recent analysis of a larger study found. Kimmel Cancer Center director William Nelson at Johns Hopkins explains that the presence of circulating tumor DNA, abbreviated ctDNA, after initial treatment was an important predictor.

Nelson: Of that 787 of them were circulating tumor DNA negative and 173 were positive. They were more likely to be from men, tumors that were a little larger, more positive lymph nodes, that BRAF mutation. Some of the generally bad actors but what was interesting is if you had the positive circulating tumor DNA test celecoxib seemed to make a difference. Among the ones that were CT DNA negative it made no difference at all and remember in the whole trial it didn't seem to make a difference.           :30

Nelson says a trial designed to assess the role of celecoxib would help determine if it helps reduce colorectal cancer recurrence and in whom. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.