Triple Threat

Any fight is easier to face with backup. And there are few more formidable foes than cancer. For some time, doctors have tackled lung cancers caused by a mutation in a particular gene, KRAS, with drugs that inhibit that gene’s impact. However, although these treatments can knock back the threat, it often bounces back, making these cases of lung cancer particularly dangerous. A new approach tried providing those inhibitors with backup, attacking not just that aspect of the cancer, but two other mechanisms as well. On tests in mice, the three-pronged approach successfully shrank lung tumours (right after treatment, with each colour representing a different tumour), and kept them small, while tumours in mice that received just the KRAS inhibitors tended to return. The study found similarly promising results in tests with human cells, suggesting this approach may help stack the odds against this deadly form of lung cancer.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image by Dr Miriam Molina-Arcas, Oncogene Biology, Francis Crick Institute
• Francis Crick Institute, London, UK
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in Science Translational Medicine, September 2019