Targeting the Undifferentiated State of Cancer
May 2018
in “
Cancer Cell
”
TLDR Less differentiated melanoma cells are more vulnerable to a type of cell death, which could improve cancer treatments.
Tsoi et al. identified four differentiation states in melanoma, revealing that melanoma cells develop drug resistance through a stepwise dedifferentiation process, which makes them susceptible to ferroptotic cell death. Their study highlighted the plasticity of melanoma and the presence of intermediate transcriptional programs. They found that less differentiated melanoma cells were more vulnerable to ferroptosis, suggesting that targeting this vulnerability could enhance the effectiveness of targeted and immune therapies.
