Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, PNAS, Stem Cells / 20.11.2016
Breast Cancer Cells Become Chemotherapy Resistant By Eating Surrounding Stem Cells
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Thomas Bartosh Jr, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor Medical Physiology
Texas A&M Health Science Center
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: One mysterious and devastating aspect of breast cancer is that it can reemerge abruptly, often as metastatic disease, in patients many years after an apparent eradication of the primary tumor. The sudden reappearance of cancer has been termed relapse and is thought to occur because a minimal number of resilient tumor cells are able to evade frontline therapies and linger in an undetectable/dormant state somewhere in the body for an unpredictable amount of time. Then, for reasons that remain unclear, these same dormant cells awaken and rapidly grow, and produce almost invariably fatal cancerous lesions. The therapeutic challenges of tumor dormancy and need to decode the underlying mechanisms involved are apparent.
Cancer cell behavior is strongly influenced by various non-malignant cell types that are found within the tumor mass itself and that help make up the tumor microenvironment (TME). In particular, bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs), which are actively recruited into the tumor stroma, directly interact with carcinoma cells and significantly impact cancer progression, although the role of MSCs in tumor dormancy remains ill-defined.
(more…)