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: Working on a way to attack metastatic breast cancer...
While this time it is not a family friend, it IS our foster daughter’s
future mother-in-law. Diagnosed with breast cancer a few days ago, we do not
know any details at this time. We only know one thing: we HATE breast cancer.
The wife of another friend of ours who began his walk with his wife’s
BC diagnosis a year before we did, has metastatic bone cancer.
I so hate this disease, I seriously considered buying and wearing an “F***
Cancer” T-shirt to work (I’m a near-inner city high school counselor, so I’m
pretty sure no one would have noticed…) and now it’s reared its ugly face
again.
At any rate, recent studies have suggested that “when the protein bone
morphogenetic protein-4 (BMP4) is switched off, breast cancer can become more
aggressive. BMP4 is active during fetal development and is maintained during
adulthood in some healthy organs, including the breast.”
So, what’s that mean?
“At its core, this study has demonstrated that high levels of the BMP4
protein in breast cancer patients is associated with better outcome, linked to
a reduction in metastatic breast cancer…”
As it notes above, BMP4 stands for Bone Morphogenetic Protein #4. “Great.
That’s so helpful! (not…)” What the thing is, is a protein (like muscles, protein
bars, and hamburgers). That’s not the most important part, though. What it DOES
is help to direct “bone and cartilage development…[in] tooth and limb…and [repair]
fractures… starts up endochondral bone [cartilage (you know, nose, ears, “torn
rotator cuff”)] formation in humans [and is] involved in muscle development,
bone mineralization, and ureteric bud (to eventually become those tubes that
kidney stones slide down before you pee them out…) development.”
According to the research, this protein pretty much disappears when
breast cancer starts. Why? Because it’s stored in breast tissue as well as the
bladder (in the actual organ, not in the urine!), prostate, colon, ovaries, and
stomach. Smaller amounts are stored in the adrenal glands, duodenum, fat, gall
bladder, lungs, and small intestines.
The idea of the study was to find a way to bring the BMP4 production
back online after late-stage breast cancer – or to keep it active when breast
cancer is first discovered. In experiments, replacing BMP4 shut down the
ability of breast cancer to kick up the invasion of other organs like the lymph
nodes, bones, lungs, liver, and the brain.
This is nowhere near ready to test for one main problem: when BMP4 gets
into the blood…it survives about 15 minutes. Then it’s gone. Current research
is to find something ELSE that mimics BMP4 that WON’T vanish in a quarter of an
hour.
I’ll keep you posted – and you can follow the research yourselves using
the links below.
Resources:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200117104742.htm,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_morphogenetic_protein_4,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/652,
(For an amusing history of one of the “hidden” proteins of the Human body
called Sonic Hedgehog…I’m not EVEN kidding! It’s what happens when video game
kids grow into research scientists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog)
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