How effective medications are depends on various factors, including the time of day when they are administered. Why? Because our bodies don't always function exactly the same. Instead, they follow the cycle set by their internal clock, otherwise known as circadian rhythm.
But since each person's circadian rhythm is different and depends on a number of different factors, it is difficult to tailor medication schedules to an individual patient's body clock. Researchers at Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin have now developed a method for determining the optimum time of cancer treatment based on certain breast cancer cell lines. They describe their approach in the journal Nature Communications .
A person's internal clock sets the rhythm of many different bodily functions and metabolic processes, such as sleep and digestion. But the organs aren't the only things that are more or less active depending on the time of day. Individual cells also follow a cycle set by a person's body clock, so they respond differently to external influences at different times of the day.
This is hugely important to chemotherapy administered to treat cancer. Previous studies have shown that chemotherapy is most effective when the tumor cells are dividing. But this finding has been hardly used at all in clinical treatment to date.
An interdisciplinary team at Charité headed by Dr. Adrián Enrique Granada from the Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCCC) set out to close this gap. The team be.