Experts find common breast cancer cause
A team of researchers in the US has discovered the cause of the most common type of breast cancer, which they claim may increase understanding of the disease.
Specialists at Tufts University School of Medicine, the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts and Tufts Medical Center have identified the progenitor cell which leads to luminal-like breast cancer, the most common form of the condition.
There are two main types of the disease - luminal-like and basal-like, the former of which is hormone dependent and grows more slowly.
According to the specialists, researchers had previously been unable to distinguish between the stem cells that make the entire mammary tissue and other progenitor cells because they appear very similar.
However, a team led by Dr Charlotte Kuperwasser, associate professor in the anatomy and cellular biology department at Tufts University School of Medicine, found that the key to differentiating between the cells was the activity of a protein known as cyclin D1.
She said: "It wasn't clear that breast tissues did in fact contain functionally distinct progenitor cells.
"Our findings, however, show that luminal-like breast cancer originates from one type of progenitor cell, lobule progenitors, which are the self-renewing cells required to generate the milk-producing structures in breast tissue during pregnancy and lactation."
The specialist said that by inhibiting the cylcin D1 protein, the formulation of breast cancer in mice could be prevented.
Dr Kuperwasser, who is also a member of the cell, molecular, and developmental biology and genetics programme faculties at Sackler, said that the mice which were lacking in cyclin D1 activity had very few lobule progenitor cells and had an absence of luminal-like tumours.
If further studies confirm that the tumours can be inhibited, she said that the development of drugs targeting breast cancer is a possibility.
Posted by Stephen Tate
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