One of the biggest medical challenges with cancer is when tumors become resistant to treatment.
A new study shows researchers are taking lessons from farmers doing pest control and applying them to cancer treatment.
Insects can evolve to become resistant to pesticides. Farmers often have adapted their responses and follow 10 principles to combat the pests.
Similar resistance problems happen in treating cancer, and it has deadly effects.
“Most of the people who die from cancer die because their cancers evolve to be resistant to the drugs that they've been treated with," said Carlo Maley, a professor at Arizona State University.
He helped author a study showing that using similar principles from farming can extend the lives of people diagnosed with metastatic cancer.
He says cancer cells that evolved to be resistant to treatment have done so at a cost.
“Sometimes it's a pump of this in the cells that pump the drug out of the cell before it can kill the cell. And those pumps take a lot of energy to run. So in the absence of drug, the sensitive cells, the cells that would respond to the drug usually can outcompete the resistant cells.”
Maley says the Mayo Clinic in Arizona will soon be starting clinical trials for some breast cancer patients.
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