ArticleNeoplasia (New York, N.Y.)2021
Opioids drive breast cancer metastasis through the δ-opioid receptor and oncogenic STAT3.
Article in Neoplasia (New York, N.Y.), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Influence of exogenous opioids on the acute inflammatory response in the perioperative period of oncological surgery: a clinical study.Brazilian journal of anesthesiology (Elsevier)Trial
- Cancer-related pain: A bidirectional modulator of cancer progression.Clinical and translational medicine · 2026Review
- Targeting the nervous system: Mechanistic insights into neuro-tumor communication and therapeutic opportunities.Acta pharmaceutica Sinica. B · 2026Review
- Role of Thoracic Epidural Anesthesia in Providing Adequate Intraoperative and Postoperative Opioid-free Analgesia for Breast Cancer Surgeries.Annals of African medicine · 2026Observational
- Shared genetic architecture of psychoactive substance use and pan-cancer: insights from a large‑scale genome‑wide cross‑trait analysis.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Building epigenetic risk scores of opioid use disorder: Insights from human postmortem brain data.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Astrocytes and Microglia Regulate Opioid Receptor-Driven Cancer Brain Metastasis and Neural Injury: Remodeling the Brain Microenvironment.Journal of inflammation research · 2026Article
- Modulators of epithelial-mesenchymal transitions in prostate cancer: potential for novel therapeutics development.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Article
- Perioperative local anesthetics as modulators of tumor progression and metastasis.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Review
- Discovery and biological evaluation of a novel and highly potent JAK2 inhibitor for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer.Journal of enzyme inhibition and medicinal chemistry · 2025Article
- Review
- Analgesic Efficacy of Acetaminophen/Ibuprofen as an Adjuvant in Patient-Controlled Analgesia for Postoperative Pain After Oncoplastic Breast Surgery: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Research progress on the impact of opioids on the tumor immune microenvironment (Review).Molecular and clinical oncology · 2025Review
- Opioid System and Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- κ-opioid receptor: from analgesic target to neuroimmune hub.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2025Review
- Decoding HSP90AA1-driven inflammatory signaling in the uveal melanoma microenvironment: an integrated analysis at single-cell resolution.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- Morphine promotes non-small cell lung cancer progression by downregulating E-cadherin via the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Impact of opioids and mu-opioid receptors on oncologic metastasis.American journal of cancer research · 2024Review
- Potential therapeutic targets of the JAK2/STAT3 signaling pathway in triple-negative breast cancer.Frontiers in oncology · 2024Review
- Targeted Single-cell Isolation of Spontaneously Escaping Live Melanoma Cells for Comparative Transcriptomics.Cancer research communications · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The opioid crisis of pain medication bears risks from addiction to cancer progression, but little experimental evidence exists. Expression of δ-opioid receptors (DORs) correlates with poor prognosis for breast cancer patients, but mechanistic insights into oncogenic signaling mechanisms of opioid-triggered cancer progression are lacking. We show that orthotopic transplant models using human or murine breast cancer cells displayed enhanced metastasis upon opioid-induced DOR stimulation. Interestingly, opioid-exposed breast cancer cells showed enhanced migration and strong STAT3 activation, which was efficiently blocked by a DOR-antagonist. Furthermore, opioid treatment resulted in down-regulation of E-Cadherin and increased expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers. Notably, STAT3 knockdown or upstream inhibition through the JAK1/2 kinase inhibitor ruxolitinib prevented opioid-induced breast cancer cell metastasis and migration in vitro and in vivo. We conclude on a novel mechanism whereby opioid-triggered breast cancer metastasis occurs via oncogenic JAK1/2-STAT3 signaling to promote epithelial-mesenchymal transition. These findings emphasize the importance of selective and restricted opioid use, as well as the need for safer pain medication that does not activate these oncogenic pathways.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.