BREAST CANCER RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! 2: Targeting How Cells Use Fat To Grow

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…

Every 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.

Today: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/249728.php

One of the ways the medical world is exploring cures and treatments for breast cancer is looking at the chromosomes of individuals with different types of breast cancer. Many people undergo tests to determine if the type of cancer they have has a component that they inherited from their family.

Another part of the genetic picture they look at is how the body responds to cancer.

Two cancer researchers (see link above for the technical article) published papers recently that show some disturbing news. In essence, they show that while certain genes will make your cells either really GOOD at burning fat or really BAD at burning fat, if your genes code for good fat burning ability, they might allow the cancer to grow FASTER because they are good at producing energy.

In the September 2012 issues of The Journal of Clinical Investigation and Nature Medicine, researchers write that they have been studying a gene that slows down cancer cell growth for more than 20 years. The PML (promyelocytic leukemia protein) is a tumor suppressor gene that regulates metabolism via the fatty acid oxidation (FAO) pathway – or controls how fast or slow a cell burns up its fat. The faster it burns up fat, the better it grows. The slower it burns up fat, the more fat gets deposited in places you don’t want it – like the belly, thighs and arms.

So you WANT it to be efficient! Yeah!

But if your regular cells burn fat fast, then that means BREAST CANCER cells in particular will do the same thing…therein lies the problem. We know that obesity and Type 2 diabetes are contributing factors to breast cancer, so how can this be treated?

Researchers conclude that “Our next logical step will be to identify a potential path for therapeutic intervention through the opposing Scylla and Charybdis-like threats and benefits of this pathway (referring to the two sea monsters that sailors of mythology had to navigate). Through pharmacological dosage and scheduling, we will come up with a way to reap the benefits of [the fat burning gene] while reducing or even eliminating its risks. The opportunity is there since we have drugs that can [slow down the breast cancer cell’s metabolism without affecting regular cells or speed up regular cell fat metabolism without speeding up cancer cell metabolism], and we have begun testing these concepts right away [using our research animal subjects].”

Image: http://download.cell.com/images/journalimages/1550-4131/S1550413112X00093_covhighres.jpg