Chemotherapy Can Be More Effective on Lung Cancer by Overcoming Drug Resistance
To improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy, Cancer Research UK scientists suggest reversing drug resistance in lung cancer, which blocks the cancer-killing effects of chemotherapy.
Tumours with a protein called FGF-2 are known to be less likely to respond to treatment. The research team, led by Professor Michael Seckl and Dr Julian Downward, found that this is because FGF-2 is involved in the development of resistance to chemotherapy drugs.
The researchers found that higher levels of S6K2 in both small cell and non small cell lung cancer tissue samples correlated with the development of drug resistance. They also found that patients who had relapsed after treatment had higher levels of S6K2 in their tumours.
This suggested that chemotherapy initially killed lots of cancer cells, but cells with S6K2 were able to survive and pass on their resistance. New cancer cells therefore also had increased levels of S6K2 and the tumour became increasingly resistant to treatment.
Prof Seckl added: “There are already drugs in development that can block the action of FGF-2, but because it has important functions in healthy cells as well as generating drug resistance in cancer cells, blocking FGF-2 might have severe side effects in patients. S6K2 has fewer functions in healthy cells, so if we can develop new drugs that stop it working, it may be a better way to reverse drug resistance.”
