Scots team's 'exciting' breast cancer discovery fuels new treatment hope

Published on Tuesday 13 July 2010 15:49

SCOTTISH scientists have made an "exciting" breakthrough in the search for drugs to treat women with a common form of breast cancer.

The team from Edinburgh University looked at the role of genetics in the type of the disease known as HER2 positive breast cancer, which affects 800 Scottish women and 9,000 UK women each year.

For the first time, they were able to identify the key role played by a specific gene in helping the cancer to spread to other parts of the body. The findings will help in the development of new drugs which will benefit women whose cancers become resistant to other treatments.

The researchers believe the discovery will also help save the lives of more breast cancer patients.

The gene studied by the researchers is called C35. The gene becomes overactive in HER2 positive tumours.

The scientists, from the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit in Edinburgh, said what makes the discovery even more exciting is that there are drugs in development which could potentially kill cancer cells which rely on this gene. The trial treatments do this by disabling a protein linked to the gene, which stops it from working.

Experts believe this type of drug would therefore be a new treatment for HER2 positive breast cancer and save the lives of women with this type of the disease, according to the study published in the British Journal of Cancer.

HER2 positive breast cancer accounts for about 20 per cent of all breast cancer cases in the UK.

The disease can be treated with the targeted drug Herceptin, which initially caused controversy when it was launched when some women were denied the treatment on the NHS.

Although the drug is now more widely available, it does not work for all patients.

In other women it may work to control the cancer for some time, but then suddenly stop being effective.

This means it is vital that the search for new treatments continues to reduce the number of deaths from breast cancer.

Research leader Dr Elad Katz, from the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit, said: "With all cancers, the key is working out how they form and spread. Identifying this gene's key role in the spread of this type of breast cancer is a significant finding.

"We are at an early stage, but there is now a real possibility there could be a new treatment for women with HER2 positive breast cancer."

Professor David Harrison, director of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit, said: "This is an important development because we now know one of the key triggers to the spread of this type of cancer.

"It is exciting to know there is a drug out there which could potentially stop this process happening and save the lives of women with breast cancer.

"We now need to do more work in the lab to prove this concept before we can start patient trials."

Each year in the UK, about 12,000 women and 70 men die from breast cancer in all its forms.

This includes more than 1,000 in Scotland.

Since peaking in the late 1980s, breast cancer death rates have fallen by more than a third.

However, breast cancer is still the second most common cause of death from cancer in women in the UK after lung cancer.

Worldwide about 458,000 women died from breast cancer in 2008.

CAUSES OF THE DISEASE

What causes breast cancer in every case is unknown, however experts are aware of several factors which increase a woman's chances of developing the disease.

Women who have a mother, sister or daughter diagnosed with breast cancer have almost double the risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer themselves.

Obesity increases risk of postmenopausal breast cancer by up to 30 per cent, while women currently using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) have a 66 per cent higher risk. The use of HRT has fallen in the UK in recent years, which has been estimated to prevent 1,400 breast cancer cases annually in women aged 50 to 59. A more active lifestyle reduces the risk of breast cancer.z