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| Subject: Chemo 'undermines itself' through rogue response Mon Aug 06, 2012 2:43 am | |
| Chemotherapy can undermine itself by causing a rogue response in healthy cells, which could explain why people become resistant, a study suggests.
The treatment loses effectiveness for a significant number of patients with secondary cancers.
Writing in Nature Medicine, US experts said chemo causes wound-healing cells around tumours to make a protein that helps the cancer resist treatment.
A UK expert said the next step would be to find a way to block this effect.
Around 90% of patients with solid cancers, such as breast, prostate, lung and colon, that spread - metastatic disease - develop resistance to chemotherapy.
Treatment is usually given at intervals, so that the body is not overwhelmed by its toxicity.
But that allows time for tumour cells to recover and develop resistance.
In this study, by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle looked at fibroblast cells, which normally play a critical role in wound healing and the production of collagen, the main component of connective tissue such as tendons.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19111700 |
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