What is it about?

In a wholly new approach to cancer treatment, this study doubled the effectiveness of chemotherapy in animal experiments. Instead of attacking cancer directly, the first-of-its-kind strategy prevents cancer cells from evolving to withstand treatment — making the disease easier to target with existing drugs. Not only did the approach fully wipe out the disease to near completion in cellular cultures, but it also dramatically increased the effectiveness of chemotherapy in mouse models of human ovarian cancer.

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Why is it important?

Despite improvements in chemo- and immunotherapies, for most solid cancers remission is still rare. A critical factor that has made cancer so challenging to defeat is the ability of cancer cells to adapt to stressors such as the immune system and toxic therapies. Eliminating this adaptive ability could provide a game-changing new approach to treatment for multiple types of cancer, making existing therapies far more effective and potentially reducing side effects.

Perspectives

This study reveals a fascinating aspect of the structure of the human genome: cells 'record' memories if their gene transcription patterns into the three-dimensional structure of the genome, storing and processing information in a fashion similar to machine learning algorithms. When these transcriptional memories become faulty, cells can reprogram their gene expression which can lead to diseases such as cancer and provide cancer cells with adaptive 'superpowers'. This study opens the door to eliminating this 'superpower' and may provide new avenues to explore for cancer elimination and prevention, with possible applications to many other diseases and aging processes where cellular reprogramming plays a role.

Vadim Backman
Northwestern University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Leveraging chromatin packing domains to target chemoevasion in vivo, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2425319122.
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