It’s a relief when a cancer patient hears the words “your cancer is in remission.” It’s far from that when they hear the words “your cancer has returned.”
New research by scientists from Weill Cornell Medicine is revealing what’s happening that your cancer returned. It turns out that there are certain cancer cells that seem to enter into a type of active hibernation which enables these cancer cells to withstand the chemo drug treatments that are designed to destroy them.
The doing their work, the researchers looked at mouse models and human tumor samples. What they found was a very specific protein called ATR that caused the cancer cells to hibernate. When the danger of the cancer cells being destroyed by the chemo has passed ATR then helped the cancer cells regain their strength by co-opting the body’s own immune cells to help them.
Once the researchers figured this out, they were able to give the cancer cells an ATR inhibitor before the chemo drugs were administered. This prevented the cancer cells from going into hibernation which allowed the chemo drugs to kill all of the cancer cells.
If these findings hold with further testing, we may have a new dawning in how to cure a person of cancer. So…when you hear the words “Your cancer is in remission”, you’ll be able to go out and celebrate!
(Reported Prevention, June 2021)
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