Resistance to treatment – it’s one of the most important issues in cancer research. If cancer cells aren’t killed during treatment, either because they weren’t affected or because they changed enough to survive the treatment, it could lead to cancer recurrence.

Tuomas Tammela, MD, PhD, has an American Cancer Society grant to explore resistance to treatment in lung adenocarcinoma, the most common subtype of lung cancer.

In this conversation he walks us through new findings from his lab on the “highly plastic state” of certain cells in tumors. He explains how this relates to tumor heterogeneity, why this is a problem in lung cancer and other cancer types, and how it could be used in combination therapies.

Tuomas Tammela, MD, PhD, is Assistant Member at the Sloan Kettering Institute at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

3:01 – What does it mean for cancer to become resistant to treatment?

5:24 – What does resistance to treatment mean in terms of the cellular makeup of a tumor?

7:21 – A helpful way to understand “tumor heterogeneity”

9:31 – What it means for cells to be in a “highly plastic state” and why that’s importance to treatment resistance and cancer progression

13:05 – Is the “highly plastic cell state” seen in different cancer types and…

14:46 – …could it be targeted therapeutically?

16:51 – How tumor heterogeneity impacts treatment resistance in lung cancer

20:42 - If later stage lung cancer tumors are more heterogenous, what could help us understand how to treat them?

25:12 – On how American Cancer Society funding has impacted his research

26:41 – A message he’d like to share with cancer patients and caregivers