Is chemo just killing cancer cells — or is it killing cancer patients?
Researchers have uncovered one of the most frightening findings ever made where mainstream cancer treatments are concerned.
It’s something that should have hit the airwaves and Internet superhighway like greased lightning. But this very important research has so far only appeared on a handful of medical sites and in one paper in the UK.
These findings, however, are so critical that not telling patients everywhere what’s been discovered isn’t just careless — it’s criminal.
‘Closing the door to cancer cells’
Immediately after hearing the results of this new study, a cancer expert called them “fascinating, powerful, and very important.”
And that’s probably a giant understatement.
Scientists from Albert Einstein College of Medicine have discovered that chemo drugs commonly used to treat breast cancer can actually cause cancer cells to zoom throughout your bloodstream and set up shop all over your body.
In other words, it’s like giving them a “speed pass” to metastasize.
These researchers have spent years studying exactly how a cancer metastasizes. Two years ago, they were able to dive deep into the secrets of that deadly process — finding that if enough rogue cancer cells meet up with immune “macrophage” cells at the blood vessels, that immune cell actually acts as a doorman, creating an opening for the cancer cells to step through and enter the bloodstream.
The technical name for the clustering of those three types of cells is “tumor microenvironment of metastasis.”
This just-out research was done to try to discover what treatments might help in “closing the door to cancer cells”… and, on the other hand, what might prop it open, making it easier for these cells to invade.
The researchers found that when they gave the chemo drug paclitaxel to lab mice who were bred to develop breast cancer, a series of three unfortunate events occurred, setting off a domino effect that allowed the cancer to spread.
- New blood vessels developed that were much easier for cancer cells to enter.
- More of those “gatekeeper” immune cells were present to help usher them into the bloodstream.
- The cancer cells were actually more mobilized, moving more quickly into the bloodstream than they would’ve on their own. It was as if those cancer cells were high on energy drinks!
That’s a deadly trio of conditions that makes metastasis almost a given.
And paclitaxel doesn’t appear to be just one bad drug — because two other chemo agents tested also made that doorway much easier to open, too.
But that was with rodents. In experiments with human tissue, the results were even worse!
Looking at before-and-after samples from 20 patients with breast cancer who had chemo, the tumor microenvironment was up to five times more hospitable to cancer cells after the treatments than it was prior to being given the drug.
Now, what makes this even more concerning, if that’s possible, is that many women undergo chemo before surgery to try and shrink breast tumors. That was the “new” curative treatment for the disease around a quarter century ago, but pre-op chemo is very often still the norm today.
That means that untold numbers of women are being exposed to treatments that we now know can be deadly.
It’s also clear that mainstream medicine doesn’t have all the answers when it comes to treating cancer — and that many of its “solutions” are actually part of the problem.
As cancer expert Julio Aguirre-Ghiso from Mount Sinai observed, since it can take years for these new cancers to appear, the patients will “never be flagged as having metastatic cancer, let alone having it linked to pre-op chemo decades earlier.”
Whether any particular cancer patient will be more susceptible to this fast track to metastasis depends on lots of different particulars — most importantly the type of cancer involved and the number of interactions between tumor cells, blood vessel cells, and immune cells. In fact, the denser the cluster of those three cells, the more likely the cancer will metastasize — even in a seemingly distant and unrelated part of your body!
Unbelievably, one of the researchers said that a lot of those questions can be answered by a “simple lab test” to find out if you have a tumor microenvironment that is more prone to metastasis. But guess what? That’s almost never done!
Look, we’ve known for a long time that chemo is often pushed on patients when it’s not necessary — and that’s especially true for those with breast cancer. Last year, we also told you about a diagnostic test called “MammaPrint” that can tell breast cancer patients how likely it is that their cancer will return, and give women a way to know if chemo will be of any benefit.
It’s outrageous that so many patients are asked to risk both the immediate side effects of chemo and its sometimes lethal ones without being offered all of the tools necessary to make a truly informed decision.
So if you’re being told by your doctor that you should be getting chemo, the first thing you need to do is get a second opinion. And if you have breast cancer, find a doc who can arrange for you to take a genetic test like MammaPrint.
Because the only thing worse than risky cancer treatments is having to endure them when they were never needed in the first place.
“Chemotherapy before breast cancer surgery might fuel metastasis” Sharon Begley, July 10, 2017, STAT, statnews.com
