Cancer treatment

Resistance of high-grade tumors to treatment involves cancer stem cell features, deregulated cell division, acceleration of genomic errors, and the emergence of cellular variants that rely upon diverse signaling pathways. This heterogeneous tumor landscape limits the utility of the focal sampling provided by invasive biopsy when designing strategies for targeted therapy. In a roadmap review paper, Parker et al. proposed and developed methods for enabling the mapping of cellular and molecular features in vivo to inform and optimize cancer treatment strategies in the brain. This approach leverages 1) the spatial and temporal advantages of in vivo imaging compared with surgical biopsy, 2) the rapid expansion of meaningful anatomical and functional MR signals, 3) widespread access to cellular and molecular information enabled by next-generation sequencing, and 4) the enhanced accuracy and computational efficiency of deep learning techniques. As multiple cellular variants may be present within volumes below the resolution of imaging, we describe a mapping process to decode micro- and even nano-scale properties from the macro-scale data by simultaneously utilizing complimentary multiparametric image signals acquired in routine clinical practice. We outline design protocols for future research efforts that marry revolutionary bio-information technologies, growing access to increased computational capability, and powerful statistical classification techniques to guide rational treatment selection ¹⁾

Despite great progress, the current cancer treatments often have obvious toxicity and side effects. and a poor prognosis (some patients). One of the reasons for the poor prognosis is that certain enzymes prevent anticancer drugs from killing tumor cells.

There are many types of cancer treatment. The types of treatment that you have will depend on the type of cancer you have and how advanced it is. Some people with cancer will have only one treatment. But most people have a combination of treatments, such as surgery with chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. You may also have immunotherapy, targeted therapy, or hormone therapy.

Example Hydroxyurea

Despite great advances, the development of cancer drugs that can efficiently kill cancer cells while protecting noncancer cells has not been achieved. By using only dietary antioxidants vitamin C (VC) and (R)-(+)-lipoic acid (LA), Liao et al. developed a nano drug VC@cLAV featuring the above function. After entering cells, cLAV dissociates into LA and DHLA (dihydrolipoic acid, reduced form of LA) and releases VC and DHA (dehydroascorbate, oxidized form of VC). In cancer cells, the two redox pairs recycle each other and dramatically promote intracellular reactive oxygen species production to kill cancer cells at low doses comparable to cytotoxic drugs. Oppositely in noncancer cells, the LA/DHLA and VC/DHA pairs exert anti-oxidant action to actively protect the organism by preventing the normal cells from oxidative stress and repairing cells suffering from oxidative stress. When compared with the first-line cytotoxic drug, VC@cLAV displayed superior therapeutic outcomes yet without side effects in diverse tumor models including patient-derived xenograft (PDX). This drug with efficient cancer cell killing and noncancer cell protection represents a new cancer therapy ²⁾.