Cancer cells’ resistance - and vulnerability - to treatment

A Yale co-led study offers insights into the interactions between tumors and their cellular surroundings, findings that might help inform treatment. The advance of any cancer is determined not only by the molecular characteristics of the tumor itself but also by its interaction with the cells that surround it. Yet understanding how exactly these interactions in the tumor microenvironment influence the course of the disease has been difficult to study. In a new study, researchers at Yale and University College of London analyzed the molecular interactions that occurred in response to a variety of cancer treatments in more than 2,500 organoids, or lab-produced models of tumors and their microenvironment, derived from the cells of patients with colon cancer. The researchers were able to identify specific interactions between the tumors and surrounding tissues that can help predict the prognosis for individual cancer patients and inform treatments that would most likely be beneficial to them. The results were published Dec. 7 in the journal Cell.