For those who have gone through cancer and their family, there's no worse news than to hear that the disease has recurred. But it happens, and a group of researchers has the answer why.
In a landmark discovery, the Institute of Cancer Research has learned that certain cancer cells are capable of sleeping, only to awaken and be active several years later.
They are able to come up with this finding when they studied the bone marrow and blood samples of a young adult patient who relapsed with a rare type of leukemia two decades after his first bout when he was still 4 years old. In medical standards, a cancer patient who remains in remission within the next 5 years after treatment is considered cured.
Upon studying the DNA of the cancer cells, they learned that two genes, ABL1 and BCR, are connected to each other, a genetic mutation that allows the researchers to establish the connection between the first and the recurrent cancer.
However, they also found new changes on the genes of the cancer cells during the recurrence, which suggest that the cancer cells were given enough time to evolve after they have remained dormant for many years.
These types of cancer cells can go to a "sleep mode" even during treatment, preventing chemotherapy and other standard forms of treatment from eventually killing them and preventing their spread. They may also be slow growing than the other cancer cells that are easily detected and are thus convenient to eradicate.
According to the team, they are aware that certain forms of leukemia are prone to relapse, but they didn't have any clear explanation why until today. They believe the study may spearhead more researches including how to make dormant cells more active so they can also be dealt with by chemotherapy or develop a treatment specifically for them to reduce the risk of recurrence.
