Few moments in cancer treatment are harder for a patient to understand than hearing that a therapy that had been working no longer is. Scans may have shown improvement for months before the progress suddenly stalls. A tumor that had been shrinking begins to grow again. The drug hasn't changed, and neither has the diagnosis. So, what happened?
Often, the tumor itself has changed. Cancer cells can adapt to the pressure created by treatment, finding new ways to survive even after a therapy blocks the pathway they once depended on. Understanding how that happens is a major focus of Dr. Elsa R. Flores and her work at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida.
