Encouraging results
Fortunately, these numerous and powerful treatments are constantly expanding: classic chemotherapies, targeted therapies, immunotherapy, antibody conjugates, custom-made vaccines prepared from patients’ tumor cells… All of them, whether prescribed alone or in combination earlier and earlier, target the cells of the initial tumor by preventing them from multiplying, but do not act on the formidable metastatic cells which have become resistant to treatments.
How do they achieve this? Thanks to their appetite for iron. They possess a unique ability: the capacity to integrate this metal. This gives them greater aggressiveness and an increased capacity to adapt to conventional treatments. However, this strength can also become a weakness: when the metal accumulates too much inside metastatic cells, they paradoxically become more susceptible and eventually die. This is known as “ferroptosis,” and it is precisely this fragility that the Curie researchers plan to address by developing a compound capable of activating these lethal mechanisms.
