BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! 1: Some Breast Cancer Cells Are Fighting Back Against Treatments

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Starting today and running once a month, I’ll be highlighting breast cancer research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you.

So here goes: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120809133851.htm

Disturbing news comes from the University of Colorado Cancer Center that some breast cancer cells have been discovered that are able to hide from chemotherapy drugs by changing their structure to look more like benign stem cells.

Breast cancer cells are gluttons for the hormones progesterone and estrogen. It’s what “feeds” them. Anastrazole uses that gluttony to target breast cancer cells. Following the cancer cell killing, DNA twisting and cell-division-interfering chemotherapy, the long-term, five-year treatment slows down the production of estrogen so that any breast cancer cells that survived the chemo will starve to death.

Some breast cancer cells are gaining this ability because of tiny proteins called microRNA and abbreviated miRNA (the image above is a model of a piece of miRNA). Discovered in the early 1990s and classified in the early years of the 21st Century, scientists had thought to use the miRNA to create drugs that would specifically attack breast cancer cells instead of taking out white blood cells and other normal cells.

What they found was that some cells had learned how to turn off a certain miRNA – and then don’t need progesterone any more. This means that the drugs targeting progesterone hungry breast cancer cells -- aren't being taken in by the cancer any more.

Now that they are aware of this cell behavior, the research HAS discovered a way to “turn off” one of the miRNA proteins that help hide the breast cancer cell. Right now it’s only been used in test tube trials. There’s a good chance that the procedure will make its way into human trials in the near future – and then be added to the arsenal of therapies used to fight breast cancer!

Image: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/molekuul/molekuul1201/molekuul120100019/12097694-3d-view-of-a-molecule-of-a-microrna-mirna-molecule.jpg