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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Researchers discovered a single gene that may be responsible for both the spread of breast cancer and the tendency of some tumors to resist the chemotherapy drugs designed to kill cancer cells.
The authors note other studies have looked at genes involved in hard-to-treat breast cancer, but this is the first to pinpoint the MTDH gene as a culprit. The gene thwarts chemotherapy by promoting the survival of cancer cells. It causes cancer to spread by binding cancer cells to blood vessels in other parts of the body, such as the lung, bone, liver, and brain.
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The investigators identified the gene by using a formula aimed at identifying changes in a large number of tumor samples. Results showed excessive numbers of the chromosomal region where the gene resides in more than 30 percent of the samples, and patients with this type of cancer were more likely to have shorter survival times due to cancers that either spread or came back.
Now that the gene has been identified, the researchers are hopeful it will lead to new and better ways to treat the toughest cases of breast cancer.
"These findings establish MTDH as an important therapeutic target for simultaneously enhancing chemotherapy efficacy and reducing metastasis risk," study author Dr. Yibin Kang, from the department of molecular biology at Princeton University, was quoted as saying. "Molecular targeting of MTDH may not only prevent the seeding of breast cancer cells to the lung and other vital organs, but also sensitize tumor cells to chemotherapy, thereby stopping the deadly spread of breast cancer."
SOURCE: Cancer Cell, published online January 5, 2009
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