Chemotherapy counteracted

摘要

Most cancer-related deaths are due to drug resistance and/or metastatic spread of tumour cells. These two properties of cancer cells have often been viewed and studied as separate processes. However, increasingly, this is changing. For instance, cancer stem cells have been shown1 not only to be resistant to diverse anticancer agents, but also to act as the seeds for germinating metastases. In a paper in Cell, Gilbert and Hemann describe another particularly interesting example of this deadly relationship. They demonstrate that cancer therapy can acutely alter a tumour's surrounding tissue and organ environment to promote cancer-cell survival, and so to facilitate metastatic tumour growth and drug resistance. These observations are potentially relevant to enhancing the efficacy of chemotherapy.