Botox may slow tumor growth in stomach cancer

Animal tests suggested that Botox injections may help fight cancer.

The new study, published in Science Translational Medicine, showed nerves help stomach cancers grow.

Research on mice found that using the toxin beloved by those seeking a wrinkle-free face to kill nerves could halt the growth of stomach tumors and make them more vulnerable to chemotherapy.

Botox is usually used in the fight against the signs of ageing, not cancer.

The toxin disrupts nerve function to relax muscles and even out wrinkles, but a growing body of work suggests nerves can also help fuel cancer growth.

Scientists Columbia University Medical Centre, in New York, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim investigated the role of the vagus nerve – which runs from the brain to the digestive system – in stomach cancer.

Either cutting the nerve or using the toxin Botox slowed the growth of tumors or made them more responsive to chemotherapy.

Dr. Timothy Wang, one of the scientists in the study, said: “If you just cut nerves is it going to cure cancer? Probably not.

“At least in early phase, if you [disrupt the nerve] the tumor becomes much more responsive to chemotherapy, so we don’t see this as a single cure, but making current and future treatments more effective.”

Some trials have started in people who are having surgery to remove a stomach cancer. There has also been research suggesting nerves may have a role in prostate cancer too.

However, Dr. Timothy Wang acknowledged that there was a long way to go before this could be considered a treatment.

“With everything new in cancer, even if it looks great, when you start to roll it out to patients it always seems cancer is smarter than we are.

“Tumors have the ability to out-evolve any single agent, knocking one leg of a stool is probably not going to topple it.

“But I think this has a lot of potential and in a decade or two I can see these pathways being targeted.”