For decades, cancer's quiet resilience has lived not only in its growth, but in its capacity to heal — to absorb the damage of radiation and chemotherapy and persist. Researchers at Wayne State and Indiana University have now turned that survival instinct into a vulnerability, developing compounds that disarm the very proteins cancer cells deploy to repair broken DNA. Backed by $3.2 million from the National Cancer Institute, this work on Ku70/80 inhibitors represents a shift in oncological thinking: rather than striking harder, the goal is to ensure the blow already struck cannot be undone.