Cancer is the leading cause of death in Japan, with one in three people dying from cancer.The difficulty in treating cancer is that it spreads to distant organs.The proliferated cancer cells are called infiltration and infiltrate the surrounding tissues.When the infiltration extends to blood vessels and lymph, the cancer cells that follow the flow are sent to other organs and new tumors are created.This is the reason why it metastasizes to distant organs.How to prevent metastasis is a very important issue in cancer treatment.

　Ordinary anticancer drugs are drugs that act directly on cancer cells to suppress their action.On the other hand, Professor Miyaura and his colleagues wondered if it would be possible to suppress the growth and metastasis of cancer cells by acting on normal cells.So far, the group has investigated the possibility that PGE, the causative agent of inflammation, controls the growth and metastasis of cancer cells.When cells of skin cancer were transplanted into mice that could not make PGE due to a gene deletion, they found that cancer formation and metastasis were significantly suppressed.In order to connect this result to the development of new drugs, we investigated whether it is possible to suppress the metastasis of cancer by inhibiting the action of PGE. PGE has been shown to act on multiple types of receptors, and blocking one of them with a drug has also succeeded in inhibiting cancer metastasis.

　This achievement provides a great guide for developing drugs that prevent metastasis.The approach of preventing metastasis by working on the side of normal cells may be a turning point in the development of anticancer drugs.