Slowing of the Cell Cycle

Question

When treating cancer, I've heard of the ideas to use chemotherapy and radiation. But what if someone were able to slow the cell cycle down so the cancerous cells would go through inter-phase, eliminating the threat of a rapidly spreading disease and giving the person more time to better treat the cancer? Would that be possible?

Answer 1

Hi Amelia,

That is a great point. The reason why cells become cancerous to begin with is because they lose their ability to slow down through the cell cycle, in other words their checkpoints and control system becomes inactivated due to mutation or other phenotypic changes. For that reason, it is really difficult to slow down cell cycle for these cells. Thus, to treat cancer we have to use radiation or chemotherapy to destroy these cancerous cells.