Cancer cells can become addicted and you can exploit that

Cancer cells can become addicted to the drugs that are meant to eradicate them. Researchers at Antoni van Leeuwenhoek have found out how this addiction occurs and how this can be exploited.

With the knowledge gained, the fight against cancer can be improved somewhat. The research results this week published in the scientific journal Nature.

It is a well-known problem for the medical world: cancer cells that become resistant to drugs, so that treatments are no longer effective.

"Tumor cells are very flexible," says research leader Daniel Peeper. "They have multiple 'electronic circuits' where they can switch between, and when a drug fights one circuit, they switch to another circuit and they continue to grow."

Achilles heel

For that resistance, tumors pay a high price. Some cancer cells become addicted to medicine and dig their own grave. "Such a resistant cancer cell is, as it were, a motor that has to work very hard to counter the medicine."

Suddenly completely stopping medication (cold turkey) disrupts this process. Consequence: the cell blows itself up, as it were. "It's like two teams that are tugging in. When one team releases, the other group falls over," Peeper explains. "That tumors can become addicted was already known, but nobody knew exactly how it worked. Mechanism we have now clarified. "

Neck stroke

However, this does not mean that tumors with resistant cells can be eradicated by suddenly stopping treatment. "Cancer is far too complicated for that: compare a tumor with a container full of colored gumballs, and if you can give 99 percent of the colors a cure, one color can survive."

His team recommends that cold-turkey stopping medication should be followed immediately by a second treatment. "In this way we can also try to administer the last surviving cells."

Discovered Achilles Heel of Cancer

British scientists think they have the Achilles heel of cancer. That is the crucial conclusion of their years of research into the control of the disease.

The immune system of the human body can be used to successfully combat cancer, even when the disease has reached an advanced stage, according to the researchers at the prestigious University College London yesterday in a statement.

Identifying a tumor

Rapidly mutating tumors such as lung cancer can also be controlled in the future. The immune system can basically recognize every cancer cell in a tumor and then destroy it, the researchers are convinced of that.

This so-called immunotherapy will eventually replace the fight against cancer with medicines. Cancer cells differ enormously from each other. By vaccinating the immune system, it can recognize and destroy all malignant cells. The first tests with patients will be held in two years.