One of the major drawbacks of targeted cancer therapies is that cancers often become resistant to the drugs. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is a prime example. Drugs that block specific enzymes (kinases) in patients with this disease often fail due to the development of cancer cells that no longer respond to the drug.
New research, using human cancer cells in mice, has shown that cancer cells under attack by the kinase inhibitors often turn up a protein (BCL6) that causes them to be protected from the drug. When a second drug that blocks the activity of BCL6 was added, the cancer cells were rendered sensitive. In essense, drug resistance was blocked. The results indicate that other cancers also have targets that render them vulnerable to existing drugs.
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