Why the therapy for colon cancer so far often fails

New approaches to the treatment of colon cancer asked

Although colon can be removed relatively well in the early stages of surgery, but the diseases are often discovered only in a stage in which the operation offers limited prospects of success. Why this is so, scientists of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (LMU) examined in a recent study.

The team from the Institute of Pathology of LMU to Eva Marina Schmidt and Professor David Horst (now Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin) has investigated in his study, why the progression of colon cancer so far delayed only a few months, if the treatment is too late starts. In colon cancer, the previous therapy often fizzles, as the tumor can multiply over several cell types, explain the experts. Their findings were published in the journal "Journal of Experimental Medicine".

So far, only slight delays in the disease process possible

Although it is often possible to successfully remove the colon cancer at an early stage, in the case of more advanced tumors, certain signaling pathways in the cancer cells must be blocked so that the tumor can not spread further, the scientists explain. With the previous approaches to block the signaling pathways, however, only a delay of the course of the disease can be achieved by a few months.

Several signal paths must be blocked

According to the researchers, the limited effect of previous treatment approaches is attributable to the fact that the colon cancer tumors consist of two different cell types that can replace each other. If a certain signal path is suppressed during therapy, this only leads to the fact that the other cell type of the tumor takes over the growth. Therefore, the researchers propose as a new therapeutic approach to attack the signaling pathways of both cell types at the same time to stop tumor growth. For the study, the scientists had examined samples from 300 patients and successfully tested in the mouse model whether the growth of the tumor can be stopped as soon as the signaling pathways of both cell types are blocked. (Fp)