Substance P/Neurokinin 1 Receptor Involvement in Breast Cancer Progression Supports Therapeutic Repurposing of the Drug Aprepitant

Authors

  • Prema Robinson Department of Infectious Diseases, Infection Control and Employee Health, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA
  • Marisa Rosso Research Laboratory on Neuropeptides, Institute of Biomedicine of Sevilla (IBIS), Sevilla, Spain
  • Pranela Rameshwar Department of Medicine–Hematology/Oncology, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, New Jersey, USA
  • Pere Gascon Division of Medical Oncology Instituto de Enfermedades Hemato-Oncológicas Barcelona, Spain
  • Rafael Coveñas Laboratory of Neuroanatomy of the Peptidergic Systems, Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla y León (INCYL), University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain, Group GIR USAL: BMD (Bases Moleculares del Desarrollo), University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
  • Miguel Muñoz Research Laboratory on Neuropeptides, Institute of Biomedicine of Sevilla (IBIS), Sevilla, Spain

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13052/ijts2246-8765.2025.023

Keywords:

Substance P/Neurokinin

Abstract

This opinion article discusses the findings of a published article, which reported on the mechanism by which neuronal substance P (SP) drives metastasis through an extracellular RNA–TLR7 axis [1]. The role of SP in cancer is not a novel finding. Rather, SP’s effect on cancer is linked to a long-held view on the neural–hematopoietic axis. Since the article omitted several seminal findings, we organized this review/commentary that discusses the landscape of SP in breast cancer. We also include our collective thoughts on the cited article that mostly support the past literature. Our article is intended to enhance the field of the neural-substance P-cancer axis and applaud the authors for their exciting findings. We believe that their findings further underscore the need to target breast cancer with an SP receptor antagonist. In this regard, we propose repurposing of aprepitant to treat breast cancer.

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References

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Published

2026-02-17

How to Cite

Robinson, P. ., Rosso, M. ., Rameshwar, P. ., Gascon, P. ., Coveñas, R. ., & Muñoz, M. . (2026). Substance P/Neurokinin 1 Receptor Involvement in Breast Cancer Progression Supports Therapeutic Repurposing of the Drug Aprepitant. International Journal of Translational Science, 2025(2), 153–164. https://doi.org/10.13052/ijts2246-8765.2025.023

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