Year: 2012
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: On principal approach to identify the mechanisms by which cancers escape from anti-cancer therapies is the analysis of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) in those tumor cells that survive treatment. Thus, by studying Her-2 positive human breast tumor cells that survived anti-Her-2 based therapies (i.e., using anti-Her-2 antibody) we observed the 3-fold or greater overexpression of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) mRNA. Similarly, by studying the mRNAs of tumor cell cultures resistant to chemotherapy (such as cisplatin), we found that low levels of mRNAs for DNA mismatch repair genes correlates with drug resistance. These results suggest that two possible strategies of sensitizing drug resistant cancer cells may be to inhibit VEGF overexpression, or to prevent the suppression of DNA mismatch repair gene expression, observed in drug resistant cells. Furthermore, we are also optimizing our RNA extraction and analysis protocol to facilitate future analysis of drug resistant variants, including the analysis of tumor cells resistant to the clinically relevant therapies that combine anti-Her-2 targeting strategies with conventional chemotherapy.
Language: English
Subfield: Oncology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W46783906