A BATTLE BETWEEN METASTASIZING TUMOR CELLS AND CHEMO
MAYAR TAMER
HIDE &
SEEK
WHAT
HAPPENS
WHEN OUR
MAIN GO-TO
TREATMENT
FAILS TO TREAT
PRIMARY
TUMORS OF
THE HEAD,
NECK AND
BREAST
CANCERS?
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For an extended period of time, health professionals in the field of oncology
have depended on the use of chemotherapy to treat cancer patients despite the
ongoing research and discovery in the field.
But what happens when our main go-to treatment fails to treat primary tumors of
the head, neck and breast cancers? cancer cells only, alongside other types of healthy cells that
do multiply often such as hair and bone marrow cells. Now it
may seem that chemotherapy does the job of curing cancer
patients, but unfortunately not. Chemotherapy was found to
fail in one condition.
THE BIG PICTURE A LITTLE ABOUT THE ENEMY
Cancer is characterized by uncontrolled abnormal cell growth leading to the
formation of atypical bodies known as tumors.
The concept of cell growth in a healthy cell is controlled by the cell cycle. A
process that aims at controlling cell growth through cyclins-regulated stages
of progression. In addition to regulating cell division, this process incorporates
mechanisms that allow for errors to be either eliminated or for cell apoptosis
occurring. However, in cancer patients this regulatory process faults, as a result of
genetic mutations, leading to the uncontrolled cell growth.
CHEMO AT WORK
Chemotherapy is the general name given to treatment of cancer using drugs.
But, to be more specific chemotherapy is the treatment using a combination of
cytotoxic medicines that aim at interfering with some aspect of the cell division
mechanism in order t o kill the cell or prevent its growth. Luckily enough however
the majority of healthy cells in the body such as muscle cells, brain cells and bone
cells do not divide very often, therefore allowing chemotherapy to mainly impact
College of Medicine and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount
Sinai began researching more to transform the way health
professionals deal with treating metastatic disease.
Together the group of investigators developed a device
"using a nanotechnology tool; biosensors, coupled with
advanced imaging technology to manipulate primary tumor
microenvironments."
In a study published in "Nature cell Biology" on 23rd January They implanted devices containing drugs that provoked
2017, scientists at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine
hypoxia in tumors, allowing them to create controlled hypoxic
revealed their discovery of a condition by which specific
and non-hypoxic tumor environments. This setup allowed
signals in primary tumors of certain cancers are capable of
for the isolation of cancer cells to identify their change in
reprogramming cancer cells to become dormant and evade
behavior as they transition from primary tumors to other
chemotherapy after metastasizing.
organs such as the lungs. This was accompanied by tracking
They elaborated that the cause of this ability is due to
the DTCs with genetically encoded biosensors to determine
hypoxia —which is a deficiency in the amount of oxygen
which cells were exposed to low oxygen, which were dormant
reaching the tissues— Hypoxia is a microenvironmental
and how they reacted to therapy.
distinctive feature of solid tumors that provokes stress
responses, dormancy programs, and chemo and
The investigators concluded that DTCs from hypoxic regions
radioresistance. Similar effects apply in primary tumors. The were able to achieve metastases and more likely to enter
study claims that primary tumor hypoxic microenvironments dormancy allowing them to be more efficient at evading
lead to a subpopulation of dormant disseminated tumor cells chemotherapy.
(DTCs) that also have the capability to evade therapy.
Based on this, a group of investigators from Albert Einstein
MEDICINE
Furthermore the findings from this research allow for the
development of a test that permits the prediction of which
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