(18-07-10) Cancer cells killed by chemotherapy may cause cancer to spread

by Sherry Baker, Health Sciences Editor

Chemotherapy is known to come with a long list of side effects -- from
debilitating nausea and hair loss to extreme fatigue -- and in many cases, it
does not cure or even stop cancer from progressing. But what if chemotherapy
does something no one has realized before during all the decades it has been in
use? What if chemo actually encourages cancer to spread throughout the body,
the process known as metastasis?

Researchers with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Comprehensive
Cancer Center and UAB Department of Chemistry have just been awarded a $805,000
grant from the U.S. Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program to see
if the answer to those questions is "yes". The study is investigating the very
real possibility that dead cancer cells left over after chemotherapy spark
cancer to spread to other parts of the body.

"What if by killing cancer cells with chemotherapy we inadvertently induce DNA
structures that make surviving cancers cells more invasive? The idea is tough
to stomach," Katri Selander, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the UAB
Division of Hematology and Oncology and co-principal researcher on the grant,
said in a statement to the media. "Fundamentally this question must be answered
to advance the knowledge base and to know all the risks and benefits of cancer
treatment. This research has the potential to reach across numerous scientific
disciplines, and may one day improve the lives of patients worldwide."

The UAB scientists are concentrating on inactivated or altered genetic
material (DNA) left in the body after breast-cancer cells are exposed to
chemotherapy. The research team stated that the resulting altered DNA could be
the deadly factor that sparks the dreaded process of metastasis through a
specific molecular pathway. Finding out whether chemotherapy could cause cancer
spread is hugely important to the field of oncology because metastasis is the
number one cause of cancer recurrence and treatment failure.

Dead cancer cells have been found to activate a pathway in the body mediated
as a protein dubbed toll-like receptor 9, or TLR9, that is present in the
immune system and in many kinds of cancer. "If TLR9 boosts metastasis, then
researchers will work on finding targeted therapies that block or regulate this
molecular pathway," Dr. Selander stated.

For more information:
http://main.uab.edu/Sites/MediaRela...
http://www.naturalnews.com/chemothe...


Source:NaturalNews

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