3 posts tagged “breast cancer research”

BREAST CANCER (pink) #2, originally uploaded by SOFTSERVEGIRL.

With October coming upon us, so will the onslaught of pink commodities up for sale all in support of breast cancer awareness month. I am a HUGE supporter of raising $$ in finding a cure for breast cancer, but the whole notion of pink is starting to get a bit carried away. And let me just say for the record I LOVE pink, always have, always will - wore pink before it was Breast Cancer Cool. But there is a certain amount of hostility I feel towards the movement that seems to more concerned with the sale of pink items than talking about the causes of cancer, like hormones in our food, plastic products we drink from, the state of produce in which we consume. I'm all for pink, but pink that educates, not purpetuates how we can continue to profit off of other people's illnesses. For the record DWR is donating 100% of the proceedes to research from the auction of these chairs.  Bravo to them.  But for those who use the pink cause for minor amounts of $$, such as .001 percentile of profit, SHAME SHAME and SHAME on you!

A very interesting article about cancer survivors and tweeting while undergoing therapy and recovery.  Anderson Medical Center has their own TWITTER page, along with lists of survivors who tweet in support of each other.  You can read the whole article here.

In lieu of my survivorship from breast cancer, I like to keep abreast (no pun attended) on the latest research so I can bug my oncologist with endless questions.  This is a super article and important for not only myself, but future survivors.

PARIS (AFP) - Geneticists have identified a super gene which causes breast cancer to metastasise, the deadly process by which the disease spreads to other organs, according to a study released Wednesday.

Described by the US researchers as a "master regulator," the SATB1 gene alters the behaviour of at least 1,000 other genes within tumour cells, said the study, published in the British journal Nature.

When over-activated it makes cancer cells proliferate, and when neutralised the gene stops the cells from dividing and migrating, the study reported.

"SATB1 will be a remarkable target for cancer therapy," lead scientist Termumi Kohwi-Shigematsu of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, told AFP.

The findings could not only pave the way to diagnostic tools that show the likelihood of the disease spreading, she said, but to drugs that could prevent or treat metastasis in breast cancer as well.

Up to now, it was impossible to predict whether cancer cells in a tumour were destined to invade neighboring tissue, travel through the blood system and form secondary tumours elsewhere in the body.

But the SATB1 protein is just such a marker. A tumour in which it is activated "is destined to metastasise," said Kohwi-Shigematsu.

Metastasis is the overwhelming cause of death in patients with solid tumours. Less than 10 percent of women with metastatic breast cancer survive beyond a decade, and just over a quarter make it past five years.

SATB1's normal role in organising other genes -- especially related to T-cells that play a critical role in the immune system -- was already well known, thanks in part to pioneering research by Kohwi-Shigematsu in the 1990s.

The gene had also been identified in breast tumours.

But the new study is the first to establish that "SATB1 is both necessary and sufficient for breast cancer cells to become metastatic," she said.

In experiments on mice, Kohwi-Shigematsu and colleagues "knocked down", or deactivated, the SATB1 gene by removing certain RNAs in the tumour cells upon which the gene depends for multiplying.

Messenger RNAs are tiny strings of nucleotides -- the basic building blocks of DNA -- that ferry the blueprints for constructing proteins from DNA genes to the cell's ribosomes, the factories where proteins are made.

The results, compared to control mice also infected with human metastatic breast cancer cells, were dramatic.

Between 125 and 160 metastatic nodules formed in each lung of all the control mice. But in the rodents in which SATB1 was suppressed, the number was between zero and five.

Deliberately over-expressing the gene had the opposite effect, causing the cancer cells to rapidly reproduce and run amok.

Translating the study's findings into an effective treatment for cancer would require targeting only the tumours in which the SATB1 gene has become overly active.

A drug that blocked the gene throughout the body would compromise its critical -- and normal -- role in activating the immune system.

Kohwi-Shigematsu is working on a means for delivering an inhibitor via microscopic nanocapsules, and said trials on humans could start within a couple of years. Prognostic tools could be available within a year.

Kohwi-Shigematsu's research is part of a new wave of cancer studies focusing on the genetic origins of the disease.

Scientists have come to realise, she said, that there are gene expression patterns called prognosis signatures, genetic profiles found across primary tumours that have metastatic potential.

"And now we have identified the protein master regulator for metastatis," she said.

But the most basic question remains to be answered, she added. "What turns SATB1 on during the course of breast cancer progression? We just don't know."

According to the American Cancer Society, about 1.3 million women worldwide are diagnosed each year with breast cancer, and nearly half-a-million succumb to the disease.