In a discovery that shakes long-held assumptions about how cancer dies – and how it survives – researchers have found a sneaky survival trick that lets tumours weather treatment and roar back stronger.

Decades have passed, and drug resistance remains one of the darkest shadows of oncology. Patients respond to treatment, hope rises, and then the cancer returns, fiercer and more unyielding than before. Much of that relapse has been blamed on mutations acquired over months, or that grow during drug treatment. As such, DFFB is not required in normal cells but is necessary for regrowth of cancer persister cells, marking it a promising target for combination therapies designed to prolong responses to targeted treatments.

The findings were reported in Nature Cell Biology and were supported in part by grants from the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society. Hangauer is a cofounder, consultant and research funding recipient of BridgeBio subsidiary Ferro Therapeutics.

Vanguard