Adaptive chemotherapy
Jun. 19th, 2009 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nancylebovFrom orac:
Cancers are made of heterogeneous cells, and under the challenge of chemotherapy, there's selection for resistant cancer cells. However, resistance is biologically costly (cool details at the link), so it might be worthwhile to try to manage the cancer rather than destroy it.
This is all very experimental (just mouse models and one promising study on actual mice), but it seems plausible that fine-tuning the chemo to the state of the cancer instead of following a pre-set schedule could work well.
Cancers are made of heterogeneous cells, and under the challenge of chemotherapy, there's selection for resistant cancer cells. However, resistance is biologically costly (cool details at the link), so it might be worthwhile to try to manage the cancer rather than destroy it.
This is all very experimental (just mouse models and one promising study on actual mice), but it seems plausible that fine-tuning the chemo to the state of the cancer instead of following a pre-set schedule could work well.
