Scientists from the Department of General Biophysics from the University of Łódź (UŁ) under the supervision of Dr Agnieszka Robaszkiewicz are conducting research to break drug resistance in tumours and improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy. This is a novel approach, no one has conducted clinical research in this area before.

‘We are trying to deprive tumour cells of one of the defence mechanisms that are responsible for the phenomenon of multidrug resistance’, explains Dr Agnieszka Robaszkiewicz, Professor at the University of Łódź.

As she adds, many defence mechanisms against the effects of cytostatic drugs have been described in the scientific literature, one of which is the presence of proteins called ABC transporters in the membrane of cancer cells. These proteins remove from the cell the drug with which it is attacked.

The expression of ABC proteins has several stages. The Lodz scientists target the first one- already at the genome level.

‘We administer compounds that inhibit the formation of proteins at the first stage, and after just a few dozen hours we observe a decrease in the number of proteins in cell membranes, making the cancer cell more defenceless’, says Agnieszka Robaszkiewicz.