Breast cancer breakthrough

A MAJOR breakthrough in the search to find a cure for breast cancer has been made by British scientists.

CURE A top drug could stop tumours growing CURE? A top drug could stop tumours growing

Millions of lives could be saved by a ground-breaking discovery that has found a way to stop cancer tumours from growing and spreading.

Researchers have hailed the findings as “exciting” and claim they are now a big step closer to developing a drug within as little as two years to beat the disease that kills 12,000 British women each year.

Instead of looking at how to stop tumours from ­forming, this new research has found a key molecule that cancer manipulates to spread throughout the body. It is this that kills 90 per cent of cancer victims.

The scientists have discovered how breast cancer cells switch off these vital molecules, called ­microRNAs, which allows the malignant cells to spread unhindered and grow in another part of the body. The scientists are now working on a drug to stop this process.

Dr Justin Stebbing, senior lecturer and consultant medical oncologist at London’s Imperial College and one of the experts behind the landmark discovery, said: “There are no available drugs as yet but they should be available within a couple of years. This is a potential cure for breast cancer. This is a step on the way to it and it helps us understand the way breast cancer cells grow and divide and if we understand this then we understand how it stop it.”

perts say that their discovery explains why some women on so‑called wonder drugs like Tamoxifen can still suffer a relapse with the cancer growing back.

More than 45,500 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK each year – around two thirds are oestrogen-receptor positive. This means that they depend on the female hormone oestrogen to grow.

But now the researchers from Imperial College, London, and the James Watson Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories in New York have discovered that microRNAs could hold the key to beating the deadly disease.

In healthy cells microRNAs stop them from growing and dividing but in breast cancer cells the microRNAs are turned off.

The experts, whose research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, hope to develop a drug to prevent this.

This means that the molecules will be produced by the breast cancer cells, stopping oestrogen fuelling the cancer spread.

Dr Stebbing said: “The oestrogen receptor is incredibly important in breast cancer. Most of the treatments around treating breast cancer are blocking it or inhibiting the oestrogen but despite that about half of all women relapse.

“We have found a new genetic pathway that the oestrogen receptor activates, very small molecules called microRNAs that are made of fragments of genetic material. In normal cells, oestrogen stimulates the production of microRNAs but they then stop oestrogenic activity that can fuel cell division, so it is like a perfect circle. But in breast cancer cells, production of the molecules is turned off.”

Dr Stebbing said: “The way to cure breast cancer or any cancer is by fundamental biological understanding of what turns cells on and off, stopping the way tumours grow. We can use these microRNAs as a new treatment and make them do what current drugs don’t do.”

He added: “If we know how to stop it then we can cure it. This only applies in oestrogen positive breast cancer but this could save millions of lives.”

Dr Laura Bell, of Cancer Research UK, said: “This may one day prove useful in future drug development that aims to treat diseases where oestrogen is thought to play a role, as in breast cancers that are oestrogen receptor positive.

“But it’s far too early to say whether or how these insights will translate into clinical benefits for people with cancer. This is a preliminary laboratory study that used cells derived from tumours, rather than looking at how cells behave in the body.

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