A landmark “evolutionary double-bind” strategy to overcome treatment resistance in prostate cancer

Posted on: 23 February 2026

Many patients with metastatic cancers receive therapy that is initially highly effective, often resulting in complete remission.

However, cancer cells have a remarkable capacity to evolve resistance to currently available therapies. As a result, resistant cells eventually proliferate causing the tumour to recur, leading to treatment failure and ultimately patient death. 

In other words, increasingly the proximate cause of death in cancer patients is evolution, which sees the cancer cells adapt and overcome even highly effective treatments.

The new work found that when cancer cells successfully evolve resistance to DNA damaging treatments, they expose a critical weakness that makes them highly vulnerable to immunotherapy. This represents an “evolutionary double-bind” in which the cancer cell adaptation to one therapy makes them more vulnerable to another therapy and vice-versa.

“The strategy is analogous to methods that might be used to control a rodent population in an agricultural field,” noted Robert Gatenby, one of the senior members of the research team from the Moffitt Cancer Center. 

“You might start by introducing owls,” he explained, “but the rodents can adapt by hiding under bushes. Here, the addition of snakes represents an evolution double bind – rodents trying to escape the owls are vulnerable to the snake and, if they avoid the snakes by staying away from bushes, they are easy prey to the owls.” 

While the idea of exploiting the way cancers evolve has often been discussed in oncology conferences, this study is the first to directly quantify and validate such a method using both lab experiments and detailed mathematical modelling approaches. 

The team began by investigating how cancer cells become resistant to radiation therapy. For decades, it has been well known that cancer cells can become resistant to radiation therapy and other DNA damage treatments such as some chemotherapies by increasing expression of DNA repair pathways which allow the cancer cells to survive and eventually proliferate. 

But the new research, just published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, found that these radiation-resistant cells also undergo unexpected but predictable molecular changes that increase their expression of specific cellular membrane proteins called “ligands” that are recognised by natural killer (NK) cells—a key component of the immune system that attack cancer cells. 

As a result, the very adaptations that help cancer cells survive radiation simultaneously make them more sensitive to NK cell-mediated killing, creating the “evolutionary double-bind.” 

In lab experiments using multiple human prostate cancer cell lines, radiation-resistant cells proved up to twice as sensitive to NK cell killing compared with radiation-sensitive cells. And when radiation therapy was followed by NK cell-based immunotherapy, the combination outperformed either treatment alone, suppressing both sensitive and resistant cancer cell populations. 

Furthermore, the investigators found their double bind strategy also works on other types of cancer cells indicating this may represent a broad new cancer treatment strategy. The researchers have essentially developed a blueprint for turning cancer cell resistance into an exploitable vulnerability that makes them a softer target. 

“Importantly, this work challenges a long-held assumption in cancer biology that resistance must come at a fitness cost,” said Professor Cliona O’Farrelly, Professor of Comparative Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, and one of the senior authors. 

“Our work shows that even when resistant cells grow faster than sensitive ones, a double-bind strategy can still be effective if the second therapy preferentially targets the resistance itself.”

“This is very exciting as it also provides a blueprint for how we can intentionally steer tumour evolution, rather than simply trying to react to resistance after it emerges. It moves evolutionary therapy from a conceptual idea to a testable, quantitative treatment design strategy.”

A new framework for designing smarter combination therapies

Beyond the biological findings, the study introduces a novel mathematical framework that rigorously defines and quantifies an evolutionary double-bind. By integrating experimental data with evolution-based competition models, the researchers were able to predict optimal treatment sequencing—and then confirm those predictions experimentally.

And while this study focused on prostate cancer, the authors emphasise that the approach is broadly applicable. 

“Any treatment that induces predictable adaptive changes in cancer cells, particularly those affecting immune recognition, could potentially be paired with a second therapy to create a double-bind,” said Dr Kimberly Luddy from the NIH-funded Moffitt Cancer Centre in Tampa Florida, who completed much of the work while undertaking her PhD at Trinity.

“This lays the groundwork for the development of evolution-informed, personalised treatment options that could anticipate how tumours will adapt over time and then time interventions to best exploit those adaptations therapeutically.”

Drs. Jeffery West (co-first author), Kimberly Luddy and Robert Gatenby from the Moffitt Cancer Center.

While new data—especially with radiopharmaceuticals and NK‑cell–based approaches—continue to show strong promise, the scientists stress that related therapies are still under active investigation and are not yet available to patients. The team is committed to rapidly advancing the work towards clinical translation as the research progresses. 

The work was supported by funding from the National Cancer Institute via the Cancer Systems Biology Consortium (CSBC); the Physical Sciences Oncology Network (PSON); the Moffitt Center of Excellence for Evolutionary Therapy; the Health Research Board of Ireland (HRB, HRA); Research Ireland; and a Trinity St. James’s Cancer Institute—Cancer Immunology Stimulus Award.

The study is available to read on the journal website.

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