The early-stage research, led by scientists from Imperial College London and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, identified a genetic ‘switch’ in breast cancer cells that boosts the production of a type of internal scaffolding.
This scaffolding is a type of protein, called Keratin-80, and related to the protein that helps keep hair strong. Boosting the amount of this scaffolding makes the cancer cells more rigid, which the researchers say may help the cells clump together and travel in the blood stream to other parts of the body.
The researchers, who published their work in the journal Nature Communications, studied human breast cancer cells treated with a common type of breast cancer drug called aromatase inhibitors.
The team found the same switch is involved in breast cancer cells becoming resistant to the medication. Targeting this switch with a different drug could help reverse this resistance, and make the cancer less likely to spread, explained Dr Luca Magnani, lead author of the research from the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial: “Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the U.K., and causes 55,200 new cases every year. Aromatase inhibitors are effective at killing cancer cells, but within a decade post-surgery around 30 percent of patients will relapse and see their cancer return—usually because the cancer cells have adapted to the drug. Even worse, when the cancer comes back it has usually spread around the body—which is difficult to treat.”
Dr Magnani said: “Up until now we didn’t know the reasons behind this, but our early-stage study suggests a type of genetic switch—called a transcription factor—can turn on genes that cause the cancer cells to not only become resistant to the treatment, but move into health tissue around the body. This research now needs to be followed up with larger studies, but if confirmed, targeting this genetic switch could prevent cancer cells from becoming resistant to the drugs, and from spreading to other areas of the body.”
