2014年4月23日訊  --長期以來癌癥療法在臨床上都是一把雙刃劍。如果對腫瘤置之不理，則會威脅患者生命，另一方面抗癌藥物的使用卻會導致抗藥性的產生并最終造成腫瘤的“百毒不侵”。

最近來自美國加州大學圣迭戈分校的研究人員發現一種名為CD61的腫瘤表面蛋白分子可能與腫瘤的抗藥性和腫瘤遷移有關，這一結果被發表在Nature Cell Biology。負責這項研究的 David Cheresh介紹說，他們研究發現腫瘤發生過程中，癌細胞會獲得類似干細胞的特性，同時也會導致癌細胞對藥物的抗性，David Cheresh等人的成果探明了這一機制的分子通路。利用這一發現加州大學的Dr. Hatim Husain設計了一種新型療法以治療抗藥性肺癌。這一研究將于明年正式啟動。（生物谷Bioon.com）

詳細英文報道：

Treating some cancers is a double-edged sword. On one hand, cancers can grow and spread when left untreated. On the other hand, many drugs used to treat lung, breast and pancreatic cancers also promote drug resistance and can ultimately spur tumor growth.

Now, researchers may be able to predict which individual tumors will metastasize and spread when treated with certain drugs. Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered a biomarker on the surface of drug-resistant tumors that could eventually help physicians reverse drug resistance in cancers and improve treatment outcomes in patients.

The marker, a molecule called CD61, was detected on the surface of drug-resistant tumors and appears to be responsible for inducing tumor metastasis by enhancing the stem cell-like properties of cancer cells. The findings appeared online April 20 in Nature Cell Biology.

Sometimes, patients respond to an initial cancer treatment but then relapse when cancer cells become drug-resistant. To find out what changes in those cancer cells, David Cheresh, a distinguished professor of pathology at UC San Diego, and his colleagues investigated how tumor cells become resistant to standard cancer drugs like erlotinib or lapatinib. They found that as drug resistance occurs, tumor cells acquire stem cell-like properties that give them the ability to thrive in the body and become unaffected by the drugs.

The investigators pinpointed the molecular pathway that accelerates both cancer stemness and drug resistance, and identified existing drugs that work in this pathway to reverse the stem cell-like properties of tumors as well as resensitize tumors to drugs.

Using these findings, Dr. Hatim Husain, an assistant professor who treats lung and brain cancer patients at UC San Diego's Moores Cancer Center, has designed a clinical trial to home in on this pathway in patients with drug-resistant tumors.

The trial, which is expected to begin within the next year, will enroll lung cancer patients who have experienced cancer progression and drug resistance to erlotinib. Though the trial will initially enroll patients who have already experienced drug resistance, Husain hopes to extend the study to reach patients in earlier stages to prevent initial drug resistance.

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