Po­laris, Ab­b­Vie, Bay­er back Stu­art Schreiber's hunt to turn can­cer treat­ments in­to cures

What hap­pens to can­cer cells that don’t die af­ter pow­er­ful treat­ment? Sci­en­tists have long known that in all but a hand­ful of cas­es, they don’t van­ish even if the pa­tients ap­pear can­cer-free — in­stead lurk­ing some­where, un­reach­able and un­de­tectable and prepar­ing, like a van­quished movie vil­lain at the start of a se­quel, for a re­turn.

Re­search over the last decade be­gan to sug­gest there was some­thing dif­fer­ent about these sur­vivor cells. It wasn’t just that they might mu­tate. They re­pro­grammed them­selves, like an op­er­at­ing sys­tem seal­ing it­self off af­ter too many in­cor­rect pass­words, and en­tered a pro­tec­tive state that oth­er cells in the body have been known to en­ter when threat­ened.

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