In two recent studies titled “Systematic identification of signaling pathways with potential to confer anticancer drug resistance” and “RAS signaling promotes resistance to JAK inhibitors by suppressing BAD-mediated apoptosis”, published in Science Signaling, Duke Cancer Institute researchers have identified the major biological events that make cancer cells resistant to certain types of therapies. The team managed to map the particular steps that breast cancer cells (along with melanoma and blood cancer cells) use to gain resistance to drugs. "Clinical resistance to anticancer therapies is a major problem," lead author Kris Wood, Ph.D., assistant professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke, said in a news release. "The most logical way to solve the problem is to understand why tumor cells become resistant to drugs, and develop strategies to thwart these processes. In our studies, we developed a screening technology that allows us to quickly identify the routes cells can use to become resistant, and using that information, we were able to show that these mechanisms seen in the laboratory are actuall