A MONASH University study has identified that beta-blockers could significantly enhance the therapeutic effect of anthracycline chemotherapy in triple-negative breast cancer by reducing metastasis.
Researchers from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS) have previously shown that beta-blockers 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.
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