Chemotherapy Effectiveness

“Chemotherapy usually works by inducing DNA damage that leads to cell death. However, rather than dying after chemotherapy, some tumour cells enter an inactive state, termed senescence, in which they are alive but have permanently stopped dividing¹. Although senescence in normal cells drives ageing and tissue degeneration², cancer-therapy-induced senescence is associated with positive clinical outcomes³. Understanding the factors that drive the senescence of tumour cells might thus aid the development of new anticancer treatments. Writing in Cell, Hsu et al.⁴ shed light on a previously unknown aspect of how chemotherapy-induced entry into senescence is controlled.”