Protein May Predict Long-Term Survival Of Women With Early-Stage Disease.(higher levels of BAG-1 may correlate with a better chance of survival for patients with early breast cancer)

2001 MAR 8 - (NewsRx.com) -- Oncologists believe they've found a novel protein "marker" that may predict the long-term survival of women with early breast cancer.

They've shown that high levels of the protein BAG-1 correlate with a better chance of living disease-free longer and living longer overall.

Bruce C. Turner, MD, PhD, assistant professor of radiation oncology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, John C. Reed, MD, PhD, scientific director of the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, California, and their colleagues at Yale University, Connecticut, looked at 116 women with early-stage breast cancer, following them for an average of more than 12 years.

They found that a woman in this group whose breast tumor carries high amounts of BAG-1 protein had an overall 10-year survival of81%. A similar woman whose tumor did not have BAG-1 had, on average, only a 50% chance of living 10 years.

"The difference in survival between these patients' groups is quite large and we think we have come up with a novel marker that may be an important diagnostic test for physicians to predict metastatic disease," says Turner, who is also a member of Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Center. The finding "may influence subsequent therapy by suggesting that these women may need more intensive treatments such as high-dose chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, or concurrent radiation and chemotherapy," he says.

Turner, Burnham, and their co-workers reported their findings in the February 15, 2001 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The scientists tested tumor tissue from each woman in the group, measuring levels of BAG-1, a protein that inhibits apoptosis, or programmed cell death. They found that compared to other potential cancer markers, such as p53, estrogen receptors, Her2/Neu, the disease "stage," and Bcl-2, another anti-apoptosis gene that predicts for survival, BAG-1 was best able to predict survival ...