In the last decade it has been seen that cancer has become really widespread, yet it has got no complete treatment as such till date. However, the therapeutic approach “chemotherapy” has saved the lives of millions. With the advent of the concept of “chemotherapeutic resistance”, the progress in the field of treatment of cancer has somewhat received a pause.
Chemotherapeutic resistance simply means that the cancer cells become resistant to chemotherapy and thus continue their uncontrolled growth even in the presence of chemotherapy. To combat this, biologists have proposed various mechanisms of how the resistance can be caused- some have hypothesized that drug inactivation by the host cells might be the cause, some pointed out that changes in the drug targets might cause the resistance, while some have blamed DNA mutations for this.
The study by researcher Rizzuti and group propose an entirely different mechanism behind this chemotherapeutic resistance. They have hypothesized that it is not only the events inside the cell that influence the process; the mechanical interactions between the cancer cells, connective tissues (or stromal cells) and the extracellular matrix also play key roles behind chemotherapeutic resistance. They have called these interactions as “tumor-stroma interactions”.
On applying “compressive stress” (a force to reduce the volume occupancy of a body) on the cancer cells, it was seen that the cell proliferation reduced. This in turn considerably diminished the efficiency of the drug (chemotherapy). In this way, mechanics (mechanical stress) was found to be involved in drug resistance.
Further, the study proposed that such mechanical manipulations of the microenvironment could be an innovative and promising therapeutic approach in the field of cancer.
This article has been published in Physical Review.
Source: Rizzuti I.F., Mascheroni P., Arcucci S., Ben-Mériem Z., Prunet A.,Barentin C., Rivière C., Delanoë-Ayari H., Hatzikirou H., Guillermet-Guibert J., Delarue M. ; (2020); Mechanical Control of Cell Proliferation Increases Resistance to Chemotherapeutic Agents; Physical Review Letters; Vol:125; Issue:12 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.
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Written by Anuska Sen, Team bioXone
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