3 ms·
> cancers typically find a way to generate resistance Resistance is a neat thing. I remember (and I'm sure someone will reply with a link to it, since I can't
by mabbo 7y ago
> cancers typically find a way to generate resistance
Resistance is a neat thing.
I remember (and I'm sure someone will reply with a link to it, since I can't find it) reading a story about a fellow with a very seriously antibiotic resistant bacteria infecting his chest. It resisted everything they had. Researchers found a phage that would attack that specific bacteria- but alas, the bacteria became resistant to the phage as well!
Fortunately, the bacteria had limited dimensions in which to change. The changes needed to become resistant to the phage made it no longer resistant to at least one of the antibiotics. It could not have its cake and eat it to. With both attacks against the bacteria ongoing, it was defeated.
What I'm implying with all this is that yes, the cancer may become resistant to this therapy in question but in doing so it may be forced to become less dangerous, or less resistant to other forms of attack. It does not change merely from "not resistant" to "resistant" but from "form A, which is not resistant" to "form B, which is resistant", and "form B" may have a lot of other consequences.
- yread 7y agoStuff like this gets used in cancer treatments, too, with combination therapies [1]. Even more interesting are drug holidays: cancer becomes resistant to drug A by evolving a new clone that uses some other metabolic pathway unaffected by the drug but is less efficient. Stop drug A, the first more efficient clone takes over again. Give drug A again and there is no resistance for a while. [1] https://www.oncode.nl/news/one-two-punchmethod-published-in-nature https://www.oncode.nl/news/one-two-punchmethod-published-in-...
- lps41 7y agoIt’s my understanding that cancer stems from malfunctioning of our own cell processes, rather than from something that is viral/bacterial. For that reason it seems wrong to think about cancer as “developing” resistances - I don’t believe that cancer is something that evolves/mutates.
- lps41 7y agoTurns out I’m wrong! Cancer does undergo natir selection and develops resistance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_evolution_in_cancer#Natural_selection_in_cancer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_evolution_in_cancer#...
- nicwilson 7y agoand they can be viral in nature, see oncogenic viruses e.g. HPV (cervical cancer)
- witherk 7y agoIt's true that cancer is made of human cells but it can still evolve on it's on. Evolution applies to anything that can reproduce while making small changes between generations. Cancer cells do this better than healthy ones, at least within the time scale of a single human life. In some species cancers have even evolved to become contagious and a single tumor has spread to thousands of hosts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_transmissible_venereal_tumor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canine_transmissible_venereal_...
- jmartrican 7y agoEvolving is how it became a cancer in the first place.
- krageon 7y agoI'm kind of curious why those priors led you to this conclusion, as I can't follow it at all. I understand that you have already figured out that it is wrong, but I'd like to understand what made you arrive at the wrong conclusion in the first place.
- nootropicat 7y agoI always wondered, resistance is an energetic cost as it tends to disappear without constant selection pressure. Why not infect someone with the non-resistant strain, let it outcompete the resistant strain inside the body and then kill it with antibiotics?
- thombat 7y agoIn general the patient is only being treated because the infectious agent is doing some kind of damage (makes them sad/sick/dead...) So the fear is that before the non-resistant strain has supplanted the resistant one the patient has become too (sad/sick/dead)
- 1_over_n 7y agoCan you link to this phage paper please. I'm about to start a project looking at phages.
- mabbo 7y agohttps://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/5/14/18618618/phage-therapy-antibiotic-resistance https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/5/14/18618618/phage-... is not the one in remembering, but it mentions the same effect. > deploying phages can cause the bacteria to evolve in response, and that evolution sometimes involves switching from being antibiotic-resistant to being sensitive to antibiotics. There's a few big stories like this. Chances are, in the next 25 years you may find yourself being treated with phages.