| Breakthrough in cause of breast cancer -
04-01-2006, 10:08 PM
Australian scientists have made a world first stem cell breakthrough that may explain why some women develop breast cancer and suffer recurrences despite undergoing treatments such as chemotherapy.
The scientific team at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne said the discovery could lead to specialised individual treatment, but warned it could be a decade or longer before it was available.
The team used mice to identify breast stem cells that form breast tissue.
Team member Dr Mark Shackleton said the researchers suspect certain stem cells may be the source for some breast cancer.
"The idea is now that we are able to identify and isolate these breast stem cells that we're going to learn a whole lot more about the way they behave," he said.
"And it will hopefully be a relatively small step then to transfer that understanding about normal breast stem cells into the behaviour of cancer cells."
Dr Shackleton, an oncologist specialising in breast cancer, said the research team wanted to be able to use this development to distinguish between normal and abnormal cells in order to develop drugs that can effectively switch off rogue cancer cells.
"One of the ideas that we've got about this is that it may be the reason that treatment for cancer, such as chemotherapy, which is effective in some people, unfortunately for some others does not eliminate their cancer.
"The reason for that happening could be the existence of these cancer stem cells.
"So this discovery really now puts us in an ideal position to be able to answer that question."
He said the aim was to eventually to develop successful individualised treatment for women diagnosed with breast cancer.
"This provides the opportunity to really hone in with an even greater degree of accuracy on the problem cells in individual patients."
The research could also be used to help women grow their own breast tissue back after surgery.
Researchers induced female mice to grow new mammary glands from stem cells - the first time that a body organ of this type had been grown from a single stem cell.
"I think it certainly may be that this discovery leads to changes in the way that breast tissue is reconstructed after surgery for breast cancer."
Victorian Health Minister, Bronwyn Pike, said the discovery could provide hope for saving lives if it led to new therapies.
"According to national cancer statistics, breast cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related deaths in Australian women, with one in 11 diagnosed before the age of 75," Ms Pike said.
"This discovery should provide valuable information about the development of breast cancer, potentially leading to new forms of treatment for thousands of Victorian women in the future."
But Dr Shackleton warned the development of a treatment for commercial use could be 10 years away.
"In reality, the information that we are able to gather from these experiments is not going to be translatable into the clinical (treatments) I would expect for at least another 10 to 20 years," he added.
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