About the episode
To combat cancer, people usually look for ways to counteract and inhibit cancer cells, but researchers at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek have now done exactly the opposite.
Many current medicines are aimed at preventing cancer cells from dividing, in order to slow down the disease or stop it altogether. But cancer cells have all kinds of tricks to get around this. The result: the cells no longer respond to the treatment.
What if, researchers thought, if we actually give the cancer cells a boost? Not everyone immediately thought that was a good idea, but when they finally tried it – stimulating cancer cells extra and then tackling them – they saw surprisingly good results.
They made the cancer cells so overactive that they became completely stressed and exhausted. They then struck with a second drug to finish the job.
This method has not yet been tested in patients. Although the first lab results seem good and the side effects in those experiments are manageable, we do not yet know whether it works in people. The suspicion is that yes, but that still needs to be tested, something that may happen at the end of this year.
In any case, it is a completely new attack strategy. The researchers hope that more labs will now work on it and that it will result in a strong new treatment.
Read more about the research here: Take the brakes off overheated cancer cells
