Now they’re combining that amazing natural substance nitric oxide (see earlier posts) with another equally amazing, but much more well known substance aspirin (already shown to prevent certain cancers in half the cases) to slow or stop the growth of colon cancer cells.

This sounds like maybe a promising trend–identifying natural substances that can be mixed with known effective medicines to boost their power against certain diseases or conditions.

The new compound is called nitroaspirin, and studies (reported at an international conference on cancer prevention held in Seattle) have shown it to be “hundreds to thousands of times more potent than traditional aspirin.” Scientists expect to start testing on humans by the end of this year.