The US study reveals that a gene has been linked to seventy percent of hard to treat breast cancers which are resistant to hormone therapies. The growth of tumour can be forced by hormones, therefore drugs, which hinder that process like tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors are used as the treatments.
However, up to a third of breast cancers are not hormone driven, so these drugs do not work and there are smaller numbers of treatments available for these patients. A new technique tested hundreds of genes at a time, instead of one at a time.
The team of researchers from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Massachusetts, made use of small, disruptive, oddments of genetic material which can turn off genes. The tumour cells were injected with oddments to examine, which genes were crucial from formation and growth of the tumour.
It was found that the gene called as PHGDH was highly active, far more than normal, in seventy percent of tumours which did not respond to hormone therapies. Over expression of the gene results in the chemistry of a cancerous cell changing and is involved in the production of an amino acid serine.
They hope that by discovering the gene which leads to some breast cancers, a drug could be developed which interferes with its activity. According lead author Dr Richard Possemato, there is a lot of potential for a significant impact if a therapy targeting the serine pathway were found to be effective.
However, as they do not treat any patients in their study or develop any chemical inhibitors of the pathway, it would be very early to envisage the reaction in the general people, added Dr Possemato. The new technique, however, allowed researchers to analyze large number of genes. The study was published in Nature.
This early work has discovered a potential new boulevard for future study into a hard-to-treat form of breast cancer, and it will be interesting to see where it leads, explained Henry Scowcroft from Cancer Research UK.