A new study demonstrates the potential effectiveness of treating tumors by combining agents that damage DNA with a drug that sensitizes cancer cells to these agents.
The research, led by George Thomas, PhD, professor at the University of Cincinnati's (UC) Genome Research Institute, and Heidi Lane of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, appears in the March 25, 2005, issue of the journal Cell.
Dr. Thomas and a co-author Stefano Fumagalli, PhD, began this research while working at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, and completed these studies at UC's Genome Research Institute, where further studies continue.
"The use of DNA-damaging agents has revolutionized chemotherapy against a wide variety of cancers," says Dr. Thomas. "However, a narrow therapeutic window, combined with possible severe side effects, has greatly limited their broader use."
These factors, says Dr. Thomas, have probably contributed to recent reports of the under-dosing of patients and the failure to blunt the disease.
When cancer cells are treated with a DNA-damaging agent, a cancer-suppressing gene known as the "guardian of the cell" (a protein called p53) responds by either killing the cell, if the damage is too severe, or allowing the cancer cell to repair the damaged DNA. If the DNA is repaired, cells can continue to multiply.