Controlling cancer may better than trying to killing it

&Tab;&Tab;<div class&equals;"wpcnt">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<div class&equals;"wpa">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<span class&equals;"wpa-about">Advertisements<&sol;span>&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<div class&equals;"u top&lowbar;amp">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<amp-ad width&equals;"300" height&equals;"265"&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab; type&equals;"pubmine"&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab; data-siteid&equals;"111265417"&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab; data-section&equals;"2">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;<&sol;amp-ad>&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<&sol;div>&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<&sol;div>&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;<&sol;div><p>Keeping cancer at bay with frequent low dose chemotherapy treatments might be more effective than trying to destroy it&comma; a study has found&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The unconventional approach suggests that cancer patients may have a better chance of survival living with their disease while keeping it under control&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Current cancer treatments often involve aggressive treatment with high doses chemotherapy in an attempt to wipe out as many tumour cells as possible&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>But complete eradication of cancer is rare&comma; and the toxic side effects of chemotherapy can be highly destructive – not only leading to hair loss&comma; nausea and extreme fatigue&comma; but also crippling the body’s immune system or triggering anaemia&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Some experts believe high-dose chemotherapy may actually worsen cancer by exerting a natural selection pressure that helps drug-resistant tumour cells to become more abundant&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The new &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;adaptive therapy” &lpar;AT&rpar; strategy is designed to oppose the evolutionary forces that drive cancer resistance&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>It involves adjusting drug doses to suit tumour response&period; Rather than trying to eradicate a tumour&comma; the treatment seeks to stabilise it by deliberately allowing a small population of drug-sensitive tumour cells to survive&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>A team of US scientists led by Dr Robert Gatenby&comma; from the H Lee Moffitt Cancer Centre and Research Institute in Tampa&comma; Florida&comma; conducted tests using the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel to treat mice with two different kinds of breast cancer&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Standard chemotherapy initially shrank the mouse tumours&comma; but as soon as the treatment stopped they grew back&period; Skipping doses whenever the tumour shrank was also ineffective and also resulted in eventual cancer progression&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Adaptive therapy – a high initial dose followed by progressively lower doses as the tumour responded – was much better at controlling cancer growth&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>In fact the treatment was so effective that between 60&percnt; and 80&percnt; of the mice could be weaned off the drug completely over an extended period of time without suffering relapses&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>During the experiment&comma; magnetic resonance imaging &lpar;MRI&rpar; scans were used to monitor the animals’ progress&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Writing in the journal Science Translational Medicine&comma; the researchers argued that conventional &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;maximum dose” chemotherapy fuelled the &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;evolutionary dynamics that permit unopposed proliferation of resistant tumour populations”&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>They added&colon; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Our results suggest that this adaptive therapeutic strategy can be adapted to clinical imaging and can result in prolonged progression-free survival in breast cancer&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Finally&comma; we note that the evolutionary principles that govern AT may be applicable to a wide range of breast cancer treatments including hormonal manipulation and immunotherapy&comma; although they will need to undergo further testing in those settings&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<div style&equals;"padding-bottom&colon;15px&semi;" class&equals;"wordads-tag" data-slot-type&equals;"belowpost">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<div id&equals;"atatags-dynamic-belowpost-68e35081d5d93">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;<script type&equals;"text&sol;javascript">&NewLine;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;&Tab;window&period;getAdSnippetCallback &equals; 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