Insight into how cancer’s evolving defense mechanism could help break it down
Turning the tables, Katherine Borden at the University of Montreal’s Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) has evoked Star Trek’s Borg in her fight against the disease. “Cancer cells rapidly evolve a multitude of defense mechanisms to evade the effects of the oncologist’s drug arsenal. Unfortunately, clinical strategies to overcome these lag far behind,” Borden explained. “This mismatch likely underlies our inability to implement new durable treatment strategies.” However, in her paper published in Cancer Research entitled “When will resistance be futile?”, Borden describes one way that cancer goes about this evolution, providing researchers with a possible tool for disarming this defense. The article is inspired by research she published in Nature (see press release from May 28, 2014) with her doctoral student Hiba Zahreddine. Continue reading here