By Admin at 22 Jul 2016, 16:01 PM
Researchers at Oxford and Nottingham Universities have developed a new drug that may help slow down the growth of triple negative breast cancer — considered the most aggressive and hardest-to-treat form of breast cancer.
Triple negative breast cancer is so named because its lacks three receptors typically found in breast cancer — estrogen, progesterone and the HER2 protein. The most successful breast cancer treatments target these three receptors, so the lack thereof in triple negative breast cancer means the most effective breast cancer treatments don’t work.
While triple negative breast cancer usually responds to chemotherapy, the cancer cells can become resistant to the treatment because they learn how to deal with hypoxia, or low oxygen levels. Hypoxia happens when an area of the body is deprived of oxygen and is found in over 50 percent of breast tumors.
When cancer cells adapt to hypoxia, they send signals telling blood vessels to send them more oxygen, which allows the cancer cells to grow. Hypoxia is not only associated with chemotherapy resistance but also with cancer spread (metastasis) and poor survival, so new treatments that target this process are an area of great interest to researchers.
The newly developed drug, called JQ1, works by combatting hypoxia, and appears to help significantly slow the growth of cancer cells. In the JQ1 study, researchers tested the drug on human cancer cells in mice. They found the drug slowed down cancerous cell growth by about one-third each day.
JQ1 was also able to attack the cells at a deeper level than treatments like chemotherapy and radiation. The researchers noted that using JQ1 in addition to chemotherapy or radiotherapy to target cancer cells that have adapted to hypoxia could help improve treatment. Dr. Alan McIntyre, a study co-author from the University of Nottingham, said:
“Triple negative breast cancer is a challenge. By tackling hypoxia that so often compromises the treatment of breast cancers, JQ1 could be an important key to helping women with aggressive breast tumors. It was really quite a good result, particularly as we were just using this drug and not any others.”
Dr. McIntyre also noted that JQ1 is being used in clinical trials for other cancers, and they are hopeful that results will be similar. A spokesperson for Cancer Research UK also expressed the potential drugs like JQ1 have in improving cancer treatment for aggressive cancers, noting, “more studies should be carried out to measure how effective JQ1 could be in patients.”
Sources:
Oncogene June 12, 2016
The Telegraph June 21, 2016
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