New cancer therapy: PARP inhibitors to help against cancer cells – Health

Hope for patients with breast cancer? An international research team wants to find a way to fight more effectively against resistant cancer cells. Scientists have discovered what mechanisms contribute to protein resistance.

In fact, defective cells can be repaired by healthy cells. That cells are broken is not bad, because the body can help itself with protein repair. According to researchers at the University of Bern and the Dutch Cancer Research Center (NKI), for example, BRCA1 and BRCA2 proteins repair broken cells.

Many breast cancer patients also have these deficient BRCA proteins, leading to an increased number of DNA mutations that can cause cancer.

Origins of Resistant Cancer Cells Found

Now researchers want to know that tumors that have such a defect can be controlled with the help of a new therapy. Because if the PARP protein, which is also involved in DNA repair, is also blocked, the cancer cells die, while the healthy cells survive. Unfortunately, despite the clinical success of PARP inhibitors, patients often develop resistance.

► However, the research team identified three mechanisms responsible for resistance to PARP inhibitors. Thanks to these results, other therapeutic approaches could be chosen in the future.

Using targeted gene excretion, researchers were able to discover which genes control DNA repair. They genetically modified millions of mutant BRCA cancer cells. After being treated with PARP inhibitors, these cells remained that became resistant to treatment and survived due to some genetic changes.

"The changes in these cells then gave us an indication of the genes involved in the development of resistance," says Sven Rottenberg of the Vetsuisse Faculty of the University of Bern. The research group is working to find other weak spots in resistant tumors, with the hope of developing new therapeutic approaches and overcoming cancer resistance resulting from faulty repair proteins.