Gene delivers clues about How Cancer Cells Develop Resistance to Chemotherapy Drug
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Brief Description:
In a National Cancer Institute study, researchers have discovered clues about how cancer cells develop resistance to chemotherapy.
Transcript:
Akinso: In a National Cancer Institute study, researchers have
discovered clues about how cancer cells develop resistance to
chemotherapy. In the study, researchers have shown that increased
gene expression in cancer cells which is the process by which
inheritable information from a gene is made into a functional
gene product, such as protein, plays a significant role in the
development of resistance to the chemotherapy drug cisplatin.
Dr. Michael Gottesman, of the NCI's Center for Cancer Research
and an author of the study, discusses the findings.
Gottesman: We've been trying to understand why it is that cisplatin
isn't an even more effective drug, why there are tumors that
are resistant to it or become resistant. And we developed in
our laboratory a model system using cancer cells and found that
they became resistant cisplatinum in a way that involved the
increase expression of a gene-which is called SIRT 1.
Akinso: Cisplatin, a chemotherapy drug that contains the metallic
element platinum, is widely used in the treatment of many types
of cancer, including bladder, lung, ovarian, and testicular cancer.
It slows or stops the growth of cancer cells by binding DNA.
Dr. Gottesman feels that knowing more about how cells become
resistant to cisplatin will help researchers increase the effectiveness
of this treatment.
Gottesman: So our goal is to improve the treatment of cancer.
It's to make the drugs we currently have more effective. And
to enable us to develop new drugs that we can use that won't
be effected by the resistance mechanisms.
Akinso: Dr. Gottesman and colleagues are developing molecular
tools to define the drug-resistance genes that are expressed
in individual cancers, and, in the future hope to use this information
to predict a patient's response to therapy and to design new
ways to get around resistance. For more information about this
study, visit www.cancer.gov. This is Wally Akinso at the National
Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.