Ccancer drugs can burn through tumors like wildfire and kill the vast majority of malignant cells. But a few stubborn cells often survive, causing a recurrence of the disease. The prevailing theory behind this drug resistance is based on natural selection: Among the vast and genetically diverse population of cancer cells in a tumor, some have random mutations that help these cells survive an attack.
“But this isn’t the full picture,” said Yogesh Goyal, a cancer researcher at Northwestern University. Goyal and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania showed in a series of experiments that cancer cells can survive treatments by turning on certain genes, even if they are genetically nearly identical to cancer cells that died but had other genes activated.
“We think this work will really change the way we think about treatment resistance,” said Arjun Raj, co-senior author of the study and a bioengineer at the University of Pennsylvania.