
Why do some targeted cancer therapies stop working? For Tyra, that's the $106M question
Targeted cancer therapies can be quite effective. Until, for some patients, the cancer mutates, and the treatment stops working.
“It’s not unlike resistance in antibiotics,” said Todd Harris, an MIT grad and former NIH fellow. “The cancer is mutating a lot. It’s under a lot of pressure.”
Oftentimes, that mutation can be as simple as a single amino acid shifting, essentially blocking the binding site of a drug. And when that happens, Harris said, you need new chemistry that binds to the protein differently, avoiding the mutated site.
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