Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a major public health concern causing the third amount of cancer cases worldwide and is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the UK and Europe. The survival rates after 5 years of diagnosis is only 50%, even after a gradual improvement over the last 30 years. This indicates a need to try and find effective prevention, diagnosis and treatments for this disease.
One such approach has been to look at commonly used drugs that were not usually considered for cancer use such as aspirin. Aspirin has been shown to be useful for CRC prevention and as an adjuvant to chemotherapy. However, current data suggests that not everyone benefits from aspirin use and this is seen in people who continuously take aspirin but still get colorectal cancer indicating that personalised medicine may be an important aspect of future cancer prevention and treatment.
A summary of the aspirin metabolism pathway has been constructed as well as the metabolites and enzymes involved in the breakdown of aspirin. We have identified candidate SNPs from the GWAS catalogue in the enzymes involved in this pathway and want to verify whether these are associated with levels of different aspirin metabolites.
These genetic instruments will be used in a two sample Mendelian Randomization framework to look at the effect of aspirin intake on colorectal cancer risk.