Cancer survives chemotherapy, mechanism to reverse it found: Study


In the study, the team focused on lactate — a product formed when cancer cells convert nutrients into energy — which was found in highest amounts in chemotherapy-resistant cancer tissue.

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An international team of researchers from the UK and China has shown how cancer develops resistance to chemotherapy – one of the biggest challenges in treating this deadly disease.

Early-stage research in mice, led by the London-based Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and China's Sun Yat-sen University, has shown that stiripentol – a drug currently used to treat epilepsy – could help overcome cancer's resistance to chemotherapy, helping to shrink tumours and prolong life.

In the study, the team focused on lactate — a product formed when cancer cells convert nutrients into energy — which was found in highest amounts in chemotherapy-resistant cancer tissue.

For the study, published in the journal Nature, researchers examined tissue from 24 patients with stomach cancer, 15 of whose cancers were resistant to chemotherapy and tumours continued to grow.

Stiripentol and chemotherapy reduced tumor size in mice with stomach cancer — for up to four weeks after treatment. These mice also survived longer — for more than 70 days.

In comparison, tumors in mice treated with chemotherapy alone shrank within a week and then began to grow again. With chemotherapy alone, no mouse survived longer than 40 days after treatment.

Additionally, lactate was found to alter the structure of a key protein involved in DNA repair, called NBS1, and affect its efficiency.

Researchers believe that lactate may be behind chemotherapy resistance in other cancers such as “pancreatic, lung, and ovarian cancer.”

“This extremely promising research has revealed a possible mechanism by which cancer can evade chemotherapy,” said Axel Behrens, professor of stem cell biology at the Institute for Cancer Research.

“In our early-stage studies, we saw that you could stop the formation of lactate and re-sensitize tumors that were resistant to chemotherapy — the treatment continued to work,” Eckel said.

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