Controlling cancer could be best way to fight the disease: Scientists

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Thursday 25 Feb 2016 - 15:18 Makkah mean time-16-5-1437 Image from The Telegraph Tampa, Florida (IINA) - Managing cancer with low doses of chemotherapy could be more effective than attempting to kill the disease, scientists believe, The Telegraph newspaper reported. The controversial approach suggests that cancer patients may have a better chance of survival if they live with their illness long term.  Current cancer treatments often involve aggressive treatment with high doses chemotherapy in an attempt to wipe out as many tumour cells as possible. But complete eradication of cancer is rare, and the toxic side effects of chemotherapy can be highly destructive - not only leading to hair loss, nausea and extreme fatigue, but also crippling the body's immune system or triggering anaemia. Some experts believe high-dose chemotherapy may actually worsen cancer by exerting a natural selection pressure that helps drug-resistant tumour cells to become more abundant which means if cancer returns it will be fatal. The new strategy is designed to prevent drug-resistant tumour cells getting a handle. Rather than trying to eradicate a tumour, the treatment stabilizes it by deliberately allowing a small population of drug-sensitive tumour cells to survive. A team of US scientists led by Dr Robert Gatenby, from the H Lee Moffitt Cancer Centre and Research Institute in Tampa, Florida, conducted tests using the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel to treat mice with two different kinds of breast cancer. Standard chemotherapy initially shrank the mouse tumours, but as soon as the treatment stopped, they grew back. However giving an initial high dose followed be regular lower doses controlled cancer growth. In fact, the treatment was so effective that the majority of the mice were weaned off the drug completely over an extended period of time without suffering relapses. Writing in the journal Science Translational Medicine, Dr Gatenby said: "Our results suggest that this adaptive therapeutic strategy can be adapted to clinical imaging and can result in prolonged progression-free survival in breast cancer. "Finally, we note that the evolutionary principles that govern AT may be applicable to a wide range of breast cancer treatments including hormonal manipulation and immunotherapy, although they will need to undergo further testing in those settings." SM/IINA