NEW DELHI, India — An international team of scientists has identified a new approach to treating cancers that no longer respond to standard therapies by exploiting the very mutations that allow tumors to become drug-resistant.
The research, led by scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, focuses on using resistance-causing mutations as targets for immunotherapy rather than viewing them solely as obstacles to treatment. The findings were published in the journal Cancer Discovery.
One of the major challenges in cancer treatment is drug resistance, particularly in metastatic cancers, where therapies that initially slow or stop tumor growth often lose effectiveness as cancer cells mutate and adapt.
The researchers proposed a different strategy: identifying common resistance mutations and using them to help the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells. To do this, the team developed a computational tool known as SpotNeoMet, which detects therapy-resistant mutations shared across many patients.
These mutations produce small protein fragments called neo-antigens that appear only on cancer cells. Because the immune system can recognize these neo-antigens as foreign, they could serve as targets for new immunotherapy treatments designed to selectively destroy cancer cells.
“Our research demonstrates a broad principle that may change how we think about treatment-resistant cancer,” said lead researcher Yardena Samuels. “The same mutations that allow a tumor to escape drug therapy can become its vulnerability when targeted through precise immunotherapy.”
Unlike highly personalized immunotherapies that must be customized for individual patients, the researchers said their approach could apply to larger patient groups because it focuses on resistance mutations shared by many people.
The team tested the strategy in metastatic prostate cancer, a condition in which most patients eventually develop resistance to existing treatments. They identified three neo-antigens that showed promising results in laboratory studies and mouse models.
Researchers said the findings suggest a potential new path for treating drug-resistant cancers by turning resistance itself into a therapeutic advantage, offering hope for broader and more effective immunotherapy options in the future. (Source: IANS)
