Hair Trigger

Just as cats use their whiskers to sense changes in the world around them, your cells have tiny ‘hairs’ called cilia that sense chemical signals in the environment. Curiously, cancer cells – like this one from a highly aggressive rare childhood kidney tumour – appear to have more cilia than normal, and the hairs are unusually long (highlighted with a green fluorescent dye) if the cell has become resistant to the effects of chemotherapy drugs. Scientists have discovered that treating these resistant cells with drugs that destroy their cilia makes them sensitive to the same chemotherapy again, probably by interfering with important signalling molecules inside the delicate hairs. In contrast, using methods that encourage the growth of cilia makes the cells resistant to the drugs. This effect is seen in several tumour types, suggesting that targeting cilia could be a new way to treat cancers that no longer respond to chemotherapy.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image courtesy of the Tanos Lab, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK
• The Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Cell Reports, June 2018