Metabolites called nucleotides are the building blocks of DNA and can impact cancer’s sensitivity or resistance to chemotherapy and radiation in brain cancer. Findings from researchers at the University of Michigan Health Rogel Cancer Center, published in Cancer Discovery, show how a specific nucleotide metabolite, called GTP, controls responses to radiation and chemotherapy in an unexpected way.
“We learned that if you increase a cell’s GTP levels, it makes it really resistant to radiation or chemotherapy. Lowering GTP levels, the cell becomes much more sensitive,” said Daniel Wahl, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of radiation oncology at Michigan Medicine and senior author of this paper.
Researchers have long known that levels of nucleotides like GTP control how fast DNA damage is repaired, which in turn controls sensitivity to therapies.
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