Researchers have discovered that killing cancer cells can actually have the unintended effect of fueling the proliferation of residual, living cancer cells, ultimately leading to aggressive tumor progression.

The findings of the multi-institutional research team — including scientists from the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center and the Institute for Systems Biology — contradict the conventional approach to treating cancer.

In their study, published in the January issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, the researchers describe how chemotherapy or other targeted therapies create a build-up of tumor cell debris, comprised of dead, fragmented cancer cells. In animal models, the team observed that this cell debris sets off an inflammatory cascade in the body and also encourages lingering, living cancer cells to develop into new tumors.

“Our findings reveal that conventional cancer therapy is essentially a double-edged sword,” says co-senior author on the study Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, who directs the Pediatric Brain Tumor Program at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s and is an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “But more importantly, we also found a pathway to block the tumor-stimulating effects of cancer cell debris — using a class of mediators called resolvins.” …