Some Cancer Treatments May Be More Effective At Night

New research by scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel has found that some cancer treatments may be more effective at night. Researchers actually found that malignant tumors could proliferate faster during later hours of the night, according to recent findings published in the journal Nature Communications.

"Cancer treatments are often administered in the daytime, just when the patient's body is suppressing the spread of the cancer on its own.," said co-study author Dr. Yosef Yarden, a biology professor at Weizmann Institute of Science, via Forbes. "What we propose is not a new treatment, but rather a new treatment schedule for some of the current drugs."

The new study has revealed that active proliferation of tumors are based on the functioning of two receptors on cancer cells: epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and the glucorcordicoid receptor (GR).

EGFR is associated with growth and the spread of cells that include cancer cells, while glucocorticoids are steroid hormones that maintain energy levels in the body during the day. Receptors pass on to the interior of the cell, messages received from other cells.

Though GC hormone levels peak during the day, researchers found that EGFR activity levels are restricted during waking hours. In other words, this means that GC levels tapper off during the night.

With that in mind, when researchers gave a breast cancer drug Laptinib to a group of mice druing different times of the day, they found that it worked best when curtailing EGFR activity. Furthermore, the experiments on the mice corroborated their hypothesis that changes in the GC levels are essential in preventing growth of cancer cells.