How Cancer Cells Decide Their Fate
In studying a key cancer protein, Galit Lahav is revealing the importance of rhythm and timing in biology
For 16 hours at a time, Galit Lahav peered into the microscope, watching and waiting.
It was the early 2000s, and Lahav, then a postdoctoral fellow in Israel, was captivated by a conundrum that had long frustrated cancer researchers. Two cancer cells growing side by side can be genetically identical, but when a dose of radiation or chemotherapy hits them and damages their DNA, they don’t always react the same way. One cell might trigger its own destruction, while its identical neighbor might pause, repair the damage, and start growing again.
“When cancer is being treated, the goal is to destroy all the cells in the tumor,” says Lahav, now the Novartis Professor of Systems Biology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS. “If a small fraction of cells is able to resist the therapy, arrest temporarily, and then recover, we want to know what leads to this and how we can overcome it.”
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