JEM: combination therapy to solve the problem of colon cancer drug resistance!

May 18, 2018 / bioin / - in colorectal cancer, the signal pathway that drives tumor progression is a potential target for systematic treatment In addition to Wnt and mak pathways, the activation of Notch signal is also found in most tumors Photo source: JEM recently, researchers from the University of Munich, Germany, led by Professor David Horst, found that high Notch activity marks a subpopulation of colon cancer cells with low Wnt and MAPK signal levels and significant epithelial phenotype Drugs targeting MAPK signaling pathway have limited inhibitory effect on tumor growth, which will cause tumor cells with high activity of notch to expand, and once targeted at notch, cancer cells with high activity of MAPK will win By using pedigree tracking experiments, the researchers found that there is a high degree of adaptability between tumor cell subsets, which is also a mechanism leading to tumor drug resistance The combination of notch and MAPK signal therapy can produce very significant antitumor effect in vivo The relevant research results were recently published in Journal of experimental medicine, entitled "targeting more cell plasticity by combined infection of notch and MAPK signaling in colon cancer" These data indicate that tumor cells can escape treatment by cell adaptive escape system, and also provide a synergistic treatment strategy targeting different subpopulations of colorectal cancer cells at the same time Reference: Schmidt et al., targeting more cell plasticity by combined investment of notch and MAPK signaling in colon cancer 2018 J exp med doi: 10.1084/jem.20171455