Researchers from the UK and UK have found that treating the most aggressive cancers should focus on targeting extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA), which are rogue DNA fragments that help cancerous tumors flourish and become chemotherapy-resistant.
They found ecDNA is present in over 17% of analyzed tumors, particularly in aggressive forms of breast, brain, and lung cancers, co-segregate during mitosis, allowing them to inherit multiple oncogenes, or cancer-prone ecDNA by daughter cells.