Turning the tables on prostate cancer's drug resistance

摘要

Drugs that keep prostate cancer at bay often stop working after a few years. That now appears to be because they prompt the growth of the very tumour cells they are meant to kill. It's not all bad news, though: blocking this growth pathway could buy time for men with drug-resistant tumours. Most early prostate cancers require male sex hormones, known as androgens, to grow. Anti-androgen drugs can cause these tumours to regress, but eventually they become resistant to them and start to grow again.