How Heat Helps Kill Cancer

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How Heat Helps Kill Cancer

Hyperthermia is occasionally used to augment the efficacy of certain

cancer therapies, but how heat helps has been a mystery. Now,

researchers have uncovered the details of one likely mechanism--heating

a tumor inhibits homologous recombination, a DNA repair system, so

cancer cells cannot mend DNA damaged by radiation or chemotherapy.

The finding, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of

Sciences, suggests that the addition of heat may expand the use of

promising cancer drugs targeted to cells defective in homologous

recombination.

" The findings reported are very important, " said Iliakis, who

studies cellular responses to DNA damage at the University of

Duisburg-Essen Medical School and was not involved in the research, in

an email to The Scientist. If confirmed with future tests, he added,

" they promise to revive the field of hyperthermic oncology--a field of

oncology that has been nearly forgotten. "

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