A common problem with many cancers is that they become resistant to chemotherapy after one or more courses of treatment. In other words, the chemotherapy works well at first, but future courses do not help as much. The CHEMORES study aims to understand more about why chemotherapy to treat lung cancer can stop working. It is looking for changes in blood and tissue samples before and after chemotherapy for lung cancer. It aims to try to find out how cancer cells stop themselves being harmed by chemotherapy.
Research has also involved a drug called decitabine to see if it can make resistant cells respond to chemotherapy drugs again. Researchers at Cancer Research UK are also studying a protein called FGF-2 that may be involved in helping cancer cells survive chemotherapy. They want to find out if it is possible to block this protein. One trial is testing a drug called LY218308. Researchers want to see if it can help to stop non small cell lung cancer cells becoming resistant to the chemotherapy drug docetaxel.