New study offers clues to how breast cancer spreads.

2003 APR 3 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A new study published by researchers at Georgetown University's Lombardi Cancer Center, in collaboration with researchers at Yale University, has identified two molecular predictors of breast cancer spread, or metastasis.

This study may one day lead to tests of breast cancer tissue that will help physicians determine whether a woman's breast cancer is likely to metastasize.

Currently, physicians have no precise way of knowing which women's breast cancer will later spread. This new research may help doctors avoid use of chemotherapy in women who they identify as statistically unlikely to metastasize. In addition, the research may have identified a new target for future therapeutic drugs to treat and/or prevent the disease.

"Most women diagnosed with breast cancer that has not spread to their lymph nodes would do well in the absence of chemotherapy, but because physicians lack tools to precisely identify those women least likely to relapse, they often over-treat patients," said Dr. Robert Dickson, professor of oncology and codirector of the Breast Cancer Program at Lombardi Cancer Center. "This research may lead us to a place where we can test tissues taken during surgery and rule out a group of women whose cancer is unlikely to spread, saving them and their loved ones the added health and financial burdens associated with chemotherapy. The research may also lead us to a new targeted way to treat cancers at risk of spreading."

Dickson and his Lombardi colleagues, Drs. Baljit Singh and Chen Yong Lin, as well as colleagues at Yale University, honed in on two inter-related pairs of promising molecular predictors of breast cancer metastasis. The first pair is comprised of matriptase, a protein-cleaving enzyme which was first identified in Dickson's lab, and a protein known as HAI-1, that shields cells from toxic effects from matriptase. The second pair of proteins consists of HGF and c-Met, which comprise an important growth factor receptor system, already known to be involved in breast cancer.

Matriptase is found on the surface ...