Research suggests preventative cancer therapies can cause the disease to ‘hibernate’ and return later

A new study suggests that preventative therapy, often carried out for years following initial treatment, triggers changes in cancer cells, which allow them to avoid being destroyed, but focusing on a particular enzyme may be the solution.

Preventative treatment designed to stop the recurrence of breast cancer can actually cause the cancer cells to mutate and ‘hibernate’, only to grow again later.

Researchers who set out to explain why breast cancer can return years after initial treatment have found that hormone therapies, used to prevent the cancer from returning, can trigger changes in some cells.  These changes cause the cells to lie dormant instead of dying off, and the cells then “wake up” years later, causing a relapse that is harder to treat.

However, the study found there may be a way to target these sleeping cancer cells before they wake up, offering new hope for patients with oestrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer, which makes up 80 per cent of all breast cancers.

Luca Magnani, professor of epigenetic plasticity at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said “After surgery to remove primary oestrogen receptor positive breast cancer, patients are given five to ten years of hormone therapy which aims to kill any remaining cancer cells.

“We know that this doesn’t work for all patients though, as their breast cancer can return years, or even decades later.

“We wanted to better understand why breast cancer does return so we can hopefully find ways to stop it – so people don’t have to live in fear or face the devastating news of a relapse.

“Our research identified a key mechanism used by cancer cells to evade therapy by remaining in a dormant state, hibernating before they ‘wake up’ years later and begin to rapidly divide again.”

Breast cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death among UK women, behind lung cancer, with around 11,400 deaths every year (2017-2019), Cancer Research said.

In 2022-23, almost 19,000 women across England were diagnosed with the disease thanks to the NHS screening programme.

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Posted by Karen Motley, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (jacquelinevance@chadlaw.co.uk), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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