WHEN cancer cells mutate and become resistant to a “magic bullet” treatment, there may sometimes be a simple solution – fire more bullets at them.
Richard Van Etten and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Los Angeles, have found that not all mutations in cancer cells have the same effect, and it may be possible to overcome drug resistance in some cases by increasing the dose.
The findings are especially important because they concern Glivec, the first of a new generation of the anticancer drugs hailed as magic bullets. Traditional cancer drugs take the scattergun approach,…
