Chemotherapy and FDA-approved anti-tumor drugs can backfire by inducing the growth of cancer cells, recent studies suggest
A team of researchers led by Harvard Medical School and University of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered that anti-tumor drugs like chemotherapy have the opposite effect on stem cells, causing them to divide too rapidly and spread out in the body.
The paper is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to researchers, the anti-tumor drugs including chemotherapy (that initially might seem effective in eliminating cancer cells), will eventually backfire by causing even more cancer.
The leading author of the study, Michele Markstein says that “we discovered that several chemotherapeutics that stop fast growing tumors have the opposite effect on stem cells in the same animal, causing them to divide too rapidly. This was a surprise, because it showed that the same drug could have opposite actions on cells in the same animal: Suppressing tumor growth on one cell population while initiating growth in another. Not only is the finding of clinical interest, but with this study we used an emerging new non-traditional tool for assessing drugs using stem cells in the fruit fly gut.”
“We did these experiments in the fly because Drosophila stem cells, in the intestine, are very much like the stem cells in our intestine, and it’s a lot easier to do experiments in flies than humans or even mice” says Markstein.
In addition, Markstein explains that “when it comes to stem cells, it is important to conduct studies in living animals because stem cells are acutely attuned to the other cells in their microenvironment. Indeed the side effect that we observed is caused by damage that the chemotherapy drugs cause to cells in the stem cell microenvironment. The stem cells respond to this damage by hyper proliferating.”
According to researchers, half of FDA approved tumor-suppressing drugs have the opposite effect on the non-tumor stem cells:
The leading authors of the study, Markstein (from University of Massachusetts) and Perrimon (from Harvard Medical School) pioneered large-scale chemical screening in adult fruit flies. The fruit flies provide “ready-made stem cell microenvironments” that are “difficult-to-impossible” to create in petri dishes, Markstein points out.
Markstein and her colleagues inserted a human cancer gene in fly genome. “We systematically fed the FDA-approved drugs to the flies and found that 14 suppressed tumor growth in the intestine. This was a great result, validating the relevance of flies as a clinical model. It was also very interesting, however, that we found that half these tumor-suppressing drugs had the opposite effect on the non-tumor stem cells, causing them to over-proliferate. This resulted in small growths or ‘tumors,’ that with the right genetic background could potentially because cancerous” Markstein says.
Back in 2012, another study showed that chemotherapy can backfire, making cancer even worse by triggering tumor growth:
For a long time, researchers have known that chemotherapy kills healthy cells as well as cancer cells. What they didn’t know is the fact that healthy cells damaged by chemotherapy release more of a protein known as WNT16B that can even boost the survival of cancer cells.
The results of the study were completely unexpected, since researchers were only seeking to find out why cancer cells are so resilient inside human body when they are easy to kill in lab.
The researchers collated tissues from men with prostate cancer and tested a common type of chemotherapy on the collected cancer tissues. According to co-author of the study, Peter Nelson, "the increase in WNT16B was completely unexpected. WNT16B, when secreted, would interact with nearby tumor cells and cause them to grow, invade, and importantly, resist subsequent therapy”.
Pharmaceuticals under the approval of FDA make billions of dollars from toxic chemotherapy treatment that causes more cancer, death and misery:
The World Cancer Report has published alarming findings that shows the global cancer rates are expected to increase 50% by the year 2020. Sadly, the latest reports show that cancer is now the number one reason behind the childhood death in America: http://www.seattleorganicrestaurants.com/vegan-whole-food/hypocrisy-of-junk-food-chemical-companies-cancer-is-number-one-cause-of-childhood-death-in-us.php
Yet, instead of focusing on prevention rather than cure, US regulatory agencies including FDA, have waged a war against organic farmers by raiding local farms and regulating toxic chemicals and food preservatives that are banned in so many countries.
Countless numbers of studies have suggested that cancer cells have stem cells that are resistant to FDA-approved anti-tumor drugs and toxic chemotherapy damages the DNA of healthy cells, so healthy cells end up releasing a certain protein that helps to grow cancer cells.
Instead, the giant pharmaceuticals keep promoting their chemotherapy fraud as the main treatment for cancer, while the biotech and chemical companies keep poisoning our drinking water, breathing air and food. While FDA and media turn a blind eye on prevention and alternative cancer therapies, millions of cancer patient (out of fear or ignorance) fall into the trap of giant chemical and pharmaceutical companies.
The only way to overcome the fear of cancer is adopting a healthy lifestyle. The solution isn’t another healthcare reform that won’t be passed by GOP anyways. The solution is regulating biotech and chemical companies, banning toxic chemicals including Monsanto’s best selling herbicide Roundup and making organically grown food cheap and available for an average family.
Sources:
http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/several-fda-approved-anti-cancer-drugs
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/shock-study-chemotherapy-backfire-cancer-worse-triggering-tumor-growth-article-1.1129897
