improving cancer treatments one step at a time

Chemotherapy is a widely used treatment for cancer. One of the side affects that can come from chemotherapy is chemotherapy induced anemia in ovarian and breast cancer patients. My aunt had breast cancer and went through several rounds of chemotherapy, luckily for her she did not have to deal with this side affect. The article i read this week states that several studies have been conducted and have shown that a popular method called Epo-based therapies can shorten survival times in some patients by inadvertently stimulating tumor growth when treating the anemia. The article states that "EphB4 is the cell receptor that is linked to the cancer anemia therapy known as recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO)." The article states that EphB4 can "enhance tumor growth via STAT3, a protein or transcription factor vital to gene regulation". The researchers stated that with knowledge of the Epo signaling pathway, the shortening of time of survival can be stopped by adjusting the pathway of the Epo treatment. This break through is important because it produces a path in which researchers can take to further improve the anemia treatment drug. Not everyone chooses chemotherapy, and those that do very little are affected by the chemotherapy induced anemia. However its comforting to know that researchers are constantly improving treatment techniques.

Here is a link to this article:

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20151016/Study-shows-why-cancer-anemia-therapy-stimulates-tumor-growth.aspx