A new discovery made by Princeton University scientists working with the Cancer Institute of New Jersey identifies a gene that causes breast cancer tumors to spread and makes them resistant to chemotherapy.

Released in the medical journal Cancer Cell in early January, the findings are being discussed with major pharmaceutical companies in hopes that a drug could block the effectiveness of the gene now that they understand how it works.

"Inhibiting this gene in breast cancer patients will simultaneously achieve two important goals: reduce the chance of recurrence and, at the same time, decrease the risk" of the cancer spreading, said Yibin Kang, an assistant professor of molecular biology at Princeton, who led the research. "Clinically, these are the two major reasons why breast cancer patients die from the disease."
The discovery is important for several other reasons, according to Michael Reiss, another author of the paper and director of the Breast Cancer Research Program at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, a part of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

"Not only has a new metastasis gene been identified, but this also is one of a few such genes for which the exact mode of action has been elucidated," said Reiss, also a professor of medicine, molecular genetics and microbiology at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. "That gives us a real shot at developing a drug that will inhibit metastasis."

Ben Ho Park, an associate professor of oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, praised the study but said it was probably too soon to say blocking the gene in humans would improve the prognosis for breast cancer patients. He said a drug would need to be developed and proved effective in clinical trials before something more sweeping could be said about the study.

"Remember, a lot of women with breast cancer are trawling the internet in search of the miracle cure," Park said. "I hate to say the study is raising false hopes, because this really does engender hope, but you have to temper your statements with realism about the prospects."

Kang said the work is unusual because it marries advanced computer models, work with lab animals and clinical follow-up with patients of the institute. This allowed him and team members Guohong Hu, Robert Chong, Yong Wei and Andres Blanco to first identify the gene, metadherin, as the likely culprit allowing tumors to spread or metastasize.

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