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: https://advancingthescience.mayo.edu/2019/03/26/alumni-buh-bye-breast-cancer/
If you don’t know already,
there are several TYPES of breast cancer.
The type of tissue
where your breast cancer arises determines how the cancer behaves and what
treatments are most effective. Parts of the breast where cancer begins include:
Ductal carcinoma
in situ: starts in the milk ducts; the most common type of breast cancer.
Invasive ductal
carcinoma: happens when the cancer has broken out of the ducts and spread,
initially to the lymph nodes.
Lobular (connects the
milk ducts to the nipple) carcinoma and invasive lobular carcinoma: starts in
the lobules of the breast, where breast milk is produced.
Connective tissue cancer:
a sarcoma that rarely begins in the connective tissue that's made up of
muscles, fat and blood vessels.
How the breast
cancers appear on microscopic examination are graded on a 1 to 3 scale, with
grade 3 cancers being the most different looking and considered the most
aggressive.
Some breast
cancers are sensitive to your body's naturally occurring female hormones —
estrogen and progesterone. The breast cancer cells have receptors on the
outside of their walls that can catch specific hormones that circulate through
your body. These include:
Estrogen
receptor (ER) positive: have
receptors that allow them to use the hormone estrogen to grow.
Progesterone receptor
(PR) positive: have receptors that allow them to use the hormone progesterone to
grow.
Hormone receptor
(HR) negative: doesn't have hormone receptors, so it won't be affected by
endocrine treatments aimed at blocking hormones in the body.
Discovering the
genetic makeup of your breast cancer cells help doctors to understand how the
individual DNA changes within cancer cells. A sample of your tumor tissue from
a biopsy procedure may be tested in a laboratory to look for:
HER2 gene. Cancer
cells that have too many copies of the HER2 gene. Targeted therapy drugs are
available to shut down the HER2 protein, thus slowing the growth and killing
these cancer cells.
Doctors are using
genetic markers more and more often to identify breast cancer groups include:
Group 1 (luminal
A): ER positive and PR positive, but negative for HER2.
Group 2 (luminal
B): ER positive, PR negative and HER2 positive.
Group 3 (HER2
positive): ER negative and
PR negative, but HER2 positive.
Group 4
(basal-like): Triple-negative
breast cancer, ER negative, PR negative and HER2 negative.
OK – basic outline
is this. The new vaccine is NOT a miracle cure. According to the article at the
Mayo site: “Keith Knutson, Ph.D., Department of Immunology and director of the
Discovery and Translation Labs Cancer Program at Mayo Clinic in Florida…has
developed a vaccine that could prevent all three subtypes of the disease —
estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, HER2-positive and triple-negative.”
I’ve underlined
the breast cancers above that the vaccine MIGHT take care of.
But don’t break
out the champagne yet – a Phase One trial is a year-long and only involves
with women who have been treated for advanced
metastatic breast cancer that is likely to recur
Phase Two (if
Phase One proves out) – it would likely focus on patients who are at high risk
for breast cancer. Dr. Knutson estimates it will take five to 10 years to complete.
Phase Three (if
Phases One and Two prove out) – would involve 100,000 women across multiple
centers.
The timeline,
while it wouldn’t have helped my wife, MIGHT help my daughter: “‘Look around
you for a women who is about 25 today,’ says Dr. Knutson. ‘By the time she
completes her child-bearing years — around age 40 — we could conceivably
have this vaccine ready to prevent her from developing breast cancer.’”
Resources: https://alumniassociation.mayo.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/mayo-alumni-issue-4-2018-FINAL-proof-MC4409-1804-proof5.pdf?_ga=2.266403982.1249667731.1570877646-1187438725.1570877646,
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/breast-cancer/in-depth/breast-cancer/art-20045654
Image: https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/960686504/960x0.jpg?fit=scale
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