Biologists discover source for boosting tumor cell drug sensitivity

DNA-damaging agents, or "DDAs," make up the most widely used group of cancer drugs. Yet their therapeutic success has been curtailed by drug resistance either present in cancer cells from the disease onset or arising during treatment. Now, biologists at the University of California San Diego have discovered a new way of re-sensitizing drug-resistant human tumor cells to the potency of DDAs. UC San Diego Project Scientist Manqing Li, Professor Michael David, and their colleagues describe on October 29 in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology how a human gene known as Schlafen 11 controls the sensitivity of tumor cells to DDAs. As such, their research may pave the way to new strategies to overcome chemotherapeutic drug resistance.