The size of skin cancer cells may affect how they respond to treatment
Source: New Scientist, January 2023
Certain skin cancer cells may differ in how they respond to various treatments according to their size. Better understanding this and how it relates to treatment outcomes could help doctors predict an individual’s drug response.
Cancer cells were generally assumed to be “a hodgepodge of different sizes”, says Chris Bakal at The Institute of Cancer Research in London.
To investigate this, Bakal and his colleagues used high-powered imaging to gauge how genetic changes affect the size of millions of melanoma cells caused by two mutations, affecting the BRAF or NRAS genes. Melanoma develops from skin cells called melanocytes and is the most serious type of skin cancer.