New understanding of BRAF-inhibitor melanoma therapy limitations

An international research group led by The University of Manchester has uncovered  new opportunities to restrain the evolution of aggressive melanoma phenotypes during BRAF inhibitor therapy.

They authors uncovered the central role of endothelin 1 and point to the potential value of endothelin receptor antagonists to suppress the outgrowth of resistant cells and maintain and improve BRAF inhibitor treatment response.

In one example, the far-red real-time viability probe DRAQ7 was combined with Fucci technology to monitor cell cycle progression and cell fate (death) in 72h (ca. 3 rounds of divisions) time-lapse imaging procedure that showed a high degree of hetrogeneity cell-by-cell in response even within a single cell line.

WHERE TO BUY

Reference:
Smith et al.  Targeting endothelin receptor signalling overcomes heterogeneity driven therapy failure.  EMBO Mol Med. June 12, 2017 e201607156