Aspirin has been touted as a preventive for everything from heart attacks to Alzheimer's disease. Now, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have new evidence it can aid a cancer drug.

Yong J. Lee, a professor of surgery and pharmacology, and his colleagues reported last week in the Journal of Biological Chemistry that aspirin appears to sensitize certain cancer cells to a protein called tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand, which mercifully is known by its acronym, Trail.

Trail and a synthetic version of it have shown promise in causing cancer cells to commit suicide, a process called programmed cell death, or apoptosis. The beauty of this drug is that it seems to leave most healthy cells alone. The problem is that not all cancers are sensitive to Trail.

Working with cell cultures, Dr. Lee and his colleagues found that pretreating these recalcitrant cancer cells with aspirin made them vulnerable to Trail. This effect has yet to be tested in patients, however.