Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy can experience severe side effects that persist long after treatments end. A new study has found a novel pathway for understanding why these debilitating conditions happen — and why scientists should focus on ‘all of the possible neural processes that deliver sensory or motor problems to a patient’s brain’ and not just those that occur away from the center of the body.

A new study by Georgia Tech researchers in the lab of Timothy C. Cope has found a novel pathway for understanding why these debilitating conditions happen for cancer patients and why scientists should focus on all of the possible neural processes that deliver sensory or motor problems to a patient’s brain — including the central nervous system — and not just the «peripheral degeneration of sensory neurons» that occurs away from the center of the body.

The new findings «Neural circuit mechanisms of sensorimotor disability in cancer treatment» are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and could impact development of effective treatments that are not yet available for restoring a patient’s normal abilities to receive and process sensory input as part of post cancer treatment, in particular.

Stephen N. (Nick) Housley, a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences, the Integrated Cancer Research Center, and the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech, is the study’s lead author. Co-authors include Paul Nardelli, research scientist and Travis Rotterman, postdoctoral fellow (both of the School of Biological Sciences), along with Timothy Cope, who serves as a professor with joint appointments in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech and in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech.

Neurologic consequences

«Chemotherapy undoubtedly negatively influences the peripheral nervous system, which is often viewed as the main culprit of neurologic disorders during cancer treatment,» shares Housley. However, he says, for the nervous system to operate normally, both the peripheral and central nervous system must cooperate.

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