图片来源：medicalxpress.com
2015年的诺贝尔化学奖颁发给了细胞DNA修复机制的相关研究，而理解细胞如何修复损伤的DNA对于开发有效的抗癌疗法或许非常重要。通过揭示机体细胞如何自发地修复引发疾病的DNA突变，研究者或许就可以帮助开发改善治疗癌症的化疗方法的有效性。
研究者Nora Goosen表示，我们可以利用知识来战胜癌症，化疗方法是通过干扰癌细胞的遗传物质来攻击癌细胞，从而使其失去增殖的能力，但癌细胞就好像健康细胞一样，其并不会不堪一击。目前一种方法就是抑制癌细胞自我修复的能力，如果我们利用化疗方法或其它药物来联合攻击癌细胞的修复机制，那么这种方法或许是有效的。
细胞中DNA的错误或可促进细胞功能失常，细胞过早成熟，甚至造成癌症发生，机体细胞中DNA的大量变化会被立马纠正过来，但有时候DNA变化会不断积累最终引发癌症。有些个体对癌症较为敏感，因为其机体DNA的修复反应存在一定的问题；
研究者Alan Worsley说道，目前我们正在开发新型药物来帮助抵御癌症，他引用了奥拉帕尼的疗法，该药物可以阻断细胞进行DNA的损伤修复，而且该药物已经于2014年12月在欧盟得到了批准。Alain Sarasin教授强调了干扰DNA修复系统所带来的风险，我们并不知道如何特殊地靶向作用肿瘤细胞，如果我们可以给患者提供一种分子来帮助抑制癌细胞进行自我修复，那么或许就可以抑制癌细胞的修复系统。
研究者希望未来某一天可以开发出一种分子增强DNA的修复，或者可以对血细胞进行靶向作用，比如进行化疗手段，这就可以在不杀灭血细胞的情况下来增强化疗药物的剂量，更好地抑制癌细胞增殖。
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Nobel-winning research could help people beat cancer
Understanding how our cells repair damaged DNA, a breakthrough which earned the Nobel Chemistry Prize on Wednesday, could make cancer treatment more effective, experts say.
By revealing how our cells automatically fix DNA mutations which can lead to illness, the discovery opened the door to significantly improving chemotherapy's effectiveness against cancer, which kills some eight million people worldwide each year.
"You can use this knowledge to destroy cancer," said Nora Goosen, a DNA repair expert at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Chemotherapy attacks cancer cells by trying to scramble their genetic code and thus their ability to multiply, but cancer cells, just like healthy ones, do not give up without a fight.
"The cell repair systems are going to try to undo the work of doctors by fixing the damage the doctors were trying to inflict," said Terence Strick, a DNA repair researcher at the Jacques Monod Institute in Paris.
One solution would be to inhibit the ability of cancerous cells to self-mend.
"If you attack these repair mechanisms (in cancer cells) in combination with chemotherapy and other drugs..., it (treatment) can be more effective," Goosen said.
Sweden's Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich of the United States and Aziz Sancar, a Turkish-American, were awarded the top chemistry award for unravelling the process by which our cells repair mutations caused to DNA by the Sun or carcinogenic substances found in alcohol and cigarettes, for example.
More susceptible
Mistakes in DNA, the chemical code for making and sustaining life, can cause cells to malfunction, age prematurely, and become cancerous.
The vast majority of changes to our DNA are immediately corrected, but some accumulate and lead to cancer.
Some people are more susceptible to cancer because their DNA repair response is faulty.