2008 Woodie Awards
New inhibitors offer hope for breast cancer
Issue date: 10/9/08
Cancer research took another step forward this month when a team of Hopkins researchers found a number of molecules that inhibit breast cancer.
The team, led by Ying Zhang, a professor at the School of Public Health, found that three different molecules which target an overly active cellular pathway in breast cancer, could be used to treat breast cancer.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, every year nearly 180,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer and almost 40,000 die. For women, this is the number one cause of cancer-related death.
Recently, there has been a downward trend of the number of diagnoses and deaths due to increased awareness and more mammograms. However, breast cancer is still a serious risk for many women.
With this in mind, the Hopkins researchers decided to focus their efforts on a novel population of cancer cells known as cancer stem cells (CSCs).
This medical hypothesis, put forth in the early 1990s, has been accumulating evidence about this rare sub-population of cancer cells.
It is believed that these CSCs are responsible for the aggressiveness and the recurrence of most, if not all cancers. For instance, it has been found that CSCs are resistant to traditional chemotherapies.
Also, the aggressiveness or malignancy of a cancer, the breaking off of a cancer cell from the main tumor to form colonies around the body, is actually what kills 90 percent of cancer patients.
The drugs used in this study targeted a cellular pathway that is overactive in breast cancer stem cells. If the researchers could turn off this pathway, then they could theoretically stop these CSCs from growing and killing a patient. It would be like putting a road block on a street so that cars could not pass that way anymore.
"Novel drugs, which can eliminate breast cancer stem cells, are needed for an improved cancer treatment," researcher Jiangbing Zhou said.
Current therapies target cells that are rapidly dividing, but CSCs are generally not growing very much. They sit and wait until the other cancer cells that make up the bulk of the cancer die off, and then the CSCs grow again. Creating a therapy which targets these CSCs is a big step forward.
The team, led by Ying Zhang, a professor at the School of Public Health, found that three different molecules which target an overly active cellular pathway in breast cancer, could be used to treat breast cancer.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, every year nearly 180,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer and almost 40,000 die. For women, this is the number one cause of cancer-related death.
Recently, there has been a downward trend of the number of diagnoses and deaths due to increased awareness and more mammograms. However, breast cancer is still a serious risk for many women.
With this in mind, the Hopkins researchers decided to focus their efforts on a novel population of cancer cells known as cancer stem cells (CSCs).
This medical hypothesis, put forth in the early 1990s, has been accumulating evidence about this rare sub-population of cancer cells.
It is believed that these CSCs are responsible for the aggressiveness and the recurrence of most, if not all cancers. For instance, it has been found that CSCs are resistant to traditional chemotherapies.
Also, the aggressiveness or malignancy of a cancer, the breaking off of a cancer cell from the main tumor to form colonies around the body, is actually what kills 90 percent of cancer patients.
The drugs used in this study targeted a cellular pathway that is overactive in breast cancer stem cells. If the researchers could turn off this pathway, then they could theoretically stop these CSCs from growing and killing a patient. It would be like putting a road block on a street so that cars could not pass that way anymore.
"Novel drugs, which can eliminate breast cancer stem cells, are needed for an improved cancer treatment," researcher Jiangbing Zhou said.
Current therapies target cells that are rapidly dividing, but CSCs are generally not growing very much. They sit and wait until the other cancer cells that make up the bulk of the cancer die off, and then the CSCs grow again. Creating a therapy which targets these CSCs is a big step forward.
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