A discovery made by researchers at the TU Darmstadt together with colleagues from California and Texas could open up new ways of treating breast cancer and other tumors.
Markus Löbrich's scientists found out how certain tumor cells repair double-strand breaks in their DNA.
The purpose of chemotherapy and radiation therapy is to target such damage in cancerous tissue.
Healthy cells can close double-strand breaks with the help of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.
In hereditary breast cancer, these genes are mutated, which also means that the standard repair procedure for DNA no longer works.
However, tumor cells with the BRCA2 mutation make do with other mechanisms.
Löbrich's working group has identified one of them.
If this process is switched off, the cancer cells can no longer join the genetic material broken by the therapy and die.
Link to the publication