HER2 Support Group Forums - View Single Post - Does radiation makes the tumor not responsive to chemo?

Lani · 09-04-2011, 08:24 AM

As I understand it, there is only the theoretical possibility that by radiating the tumor/mets you are selecting out the more quickly dividing cells (just like chemo) and leaving the dormant cancer stem cells.

That theoretical possibility apparently is the same with chemo or radiation as I understand it.

Theoretically again, the best combination with radiation therapy would be concurrent treatment with a targetted agent against the most common pathway it would "escape" from the treatment--whether something that targets cancer stem cells or otherwise.

That being said (ie, theoretically), nothing I have read has described radiation as making subsequent chemotherapy less likely to work, but it would be difficult to do a controlled experiment to test this out..

As with most things, it seems they do not know yet!

Sorry...

09-04-2011, 08:24 AM	#2
Lani Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 4,778	Re: Does radiation makes the tumor not responsive to chemo? As I understand it, there is only the theoretical possibility that by radiating the tumor/mets you are selecting out the more quickly dividing cells (just like chemo) and leaving the dormant cancer stem cells. That theoretical possibility apparently is the same with chemo or radiation as I understand it. Theoretically again, the best combination with radiation therapy would be concurrent treatment with a targetted agent against the most common pathway it would "escape" from the treatment--whether something that targets cancer stem cells or otherwise. That being said (ie, theoretically), nothing I have read has described radiation as making subsequent chemotherapy less likely to work, but it would be difficult to do a controlled experiment to test this out.. As with most things, it seems they do not know yet! Sorry...