Cancer therapy chemotherapy and radiotherapy reduce rate of metastasis neoplasm

Cancer Research: New Findings on the Effect of Chemotherapy and Radiation Therapy

According to experts, around 14 million people worldwide contract cancer every year, and over eight million people die of it. In the fight against the serious illness is mainly put on surgery, chemo and radiation. German researchers have now gained new insights into chemotherapeutics and radiotherapy.

Number of cancers is increasing

According to the Center for Cancer Registry Data at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), "around 14.1 million people worldwide suffer from cancer (without white skin cancer) every year and around 8.2 million people die from it". Also in this country there are more and more new cancer cases. The number of new diagnoses has almost doubled in Germany since 1970. Patients are usually treated by surgery, chemotherapy and / or radiation. German researchers have now gained new insights into chemotherapeutics and radiotherapy.

Researchers have now shown that chemotherapy and radiotherapy not only change the size of tumors, but also the geometry of the blood vessels. This change in turn reduces the rate of metastatic neoplasm in most cases. (Image: auremar / fotolia.com)

In most cases, not the primary tumor leads to death

As reported by the "Informationsdienst Wissenschaft" (idw), researchers from the University of Stralsund and Prof. Dr. Ing. Gero Wedemann and doctors at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf prove that chemotherapeutics and radiotherapy not only change the size of tumors, but also the geometry of the blood vessels.

This change in turn reduces the rate of metastatic neoplasm in most cases.

In cancer, in 90 percent of cases, not the primary tumor but the metastases lead to death.

New approaches in the development of new treatment options

However, the exact nature of the spread of metastases and how it can be influenced by treatments is still largely unknown.

The knowledge gained leads to new approaches in the development of new treatment options. To find out, the researchers linked experiments with mice and computer simulations.

The results were recently published in the journal "PLOS ONE" under the title "Radiotherapy and chemotherapy change vessel tree geometry and metastatic spread in a small cell lung cancer xenograft mouse tumor model". (Ad)