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| Scientists have discovered a drug that can target a signalling pathway that switches about half of all cancer cases into overdrive, offering hope to treat drug-resistant tumors |
An experimental drug could finally let doctors treat half of cancers, which often become drug resistant, defying treatment.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco used a drug being developed by Revolution Medicines to slow the growth of lung, skin, colon and pancreatic cells in the lab.
The cancers they hope to treat are particularly stubborn thanks to mutations that make ells grow out of control.
Since their experiments in animals so successfully disrupted this process, the researchers plan to expedite it to clinical trials, where it could change the way doctors treat half of the most stubborn, deadly cancers they encounter.
Any body tissue can become cancerous because any cell's copying process can be corrupted by genetic mutations that cause it to grow out of control.
Our tissues are constantly repairing themselves by creating more cells, which is accomplished through cellular division.
These divisions are triggered by communications passed through a sort of cellular game of telephone, or a signalling pathway.
As the instructions for cell division are passed down the line, they're vulnerable to get interrupted, which can then cause a genetic mutation that causes cells to multiply out of control.
One of the signalling pathways involved is the MAPK/ERK pathway. Messages to turn cell division 'on' or 'off' travel through this pathway.
But if one of the proteins that acts like a switch gets stuck in one position or the other, divide out of control, becoming a cancer.














