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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