Question

The Sucker's Gambit cancer therapy relies on what evolutionary phenomenon or strategy? (Select one).

A. Cells in a tumor differ from one another and actually compete with one another. Thus a goal is to find a way to make chemotherapy sensitive cells OUTCOMPETE non-sensitive cells BEFORE apply chemotherapy.

B. Cells in a tumor are different from one another. Attacking the chemotherapy resistant cells with pathogens will make them more susceptible to chemotherapy.

C. Neither answer is correct.

Answer 1

The Sucker's Gambit cancer therapy relies on :-

B. Attacking the chemotherapy resistant cells with pathogens will make them more susceptible to chemotherapy.

Approach to exploiting evolutionary dynamics for cancer treatment is known as the "Sucker's gambit" or the "evolutionary double bind". It means in a cancer first treatment make the tumor more vulnerable to second treatment, which in turns make tumor vulnerable to first treatment.

?If chemotherapy is given there will be sensitive cells and non-sensitive(resistant) cells. Sensitive cells will be killed whereas the resistant cells will be alived. So if the non-sensitive/resistant cells are attacked by any method, chemotherapy will be more affective. Here the second treatment is making the tumor vulnerable to the first treatment (chemotherapy).

?The first option is incorrect as Tumor cells do not compete to each other. They exploit the cell competition mechanism to expand and grow. So the chemotherapy-sensitive cannot be made outcompetent to the resistant cells before application of chemotherapy.

Thus the correct option is B.