Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention

UK scientists say they have discovered why some women fail respond to breast cancer treatment, and it is a gene error they believe they can fix.

Tamoxifen is given to most women diagnosed with breast cancer to prevent the cancer returning.

But not all women respond to the drug – experts estimate a third get no benefit.

The work in the journal Cancer Research suggests the problem is too much of a gene called FGFR1.

This discovery could lead to new treatments for these women as scientists “switch off” the action of FGFR1, enabling Tamoxifen to work.

The team of scientists in the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research have already shown this is possible in the lab.

They introduced a drug which “switched off” the action of FGFR1.

Once FGFR1 was stopped, hormone-based treatments like Tamoxifen could get back to work in destroying cancer cells, they found.

The researchers believe this could ultimately help thousands of women each year.

They say one in 10 breast cancer patients has too much of the FGFR1 gene.

Dr Nick Turner, who led the research, said: “Understanding how this gene can cause Tamoxifen resistance reveals a new drug target for treating breast cancers in patients who would otherwise have a poor outcome.

“There are a number of drugs in development that stop FGFR1 working, and clinical studies are investigating whether these drugs work against cancers with too many copies of this gene.

“The next step is to set up a clinical trial to see whether a drug that blocks the action of this gene can counteract hormone therapy resistance in breast cancer patients.

“If these trials confirm our lab work we could be on the verge of a potentially exciting new treatment for breast cancer.”

Dr Lesley Walker of Cancer Research UK, the charity which helped fund the work, said: “Cracking the problem of resistance to treatments such as Tamoxifen would be a major advance in treating breast cancer.”

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK affecting more than 45,500 women each year.

Tamoxifen blocks the female sex hormone oestrogen that fuels the growth of some breast tumours.

A growing body of laboratory and animal evidence as well as epidemiological data shows low levels of vitamin D may contribute to certain types of cancer. Conversely, strong biological and mechanistic bases indicate that vitamin D may play some role in the prevention of colon, prostate, and breast cancers.

Vitamin D is essential for promoting calcium absorption for bone and overall health in people. Low levels of vitamin D can lead to rickets in infants and children and the loss of bone density in adults.

More than 25 million adults in the United States have or are at risk of developing osteoporosis, a disease characterized by the loss of bone density that makes bones fragile and significantly increases the risk of fractures. When it comes to Osteoporosis, it’s a chicken and egg scenario: osteoporosis is most often associated with inadequate calcium intakes (generally less than 1,000-1,200 mg/day), but insufficient vitamin D contributes to osteoporosis by reducing the body’s calcium absorption.

While the evidence is far from conclusive, vitamin D may also prove to be an important protective nutrient in the prevention and treatment of cancer.

Video: Possible 75% cancer mortality reduction with Vitamin D

In a new study, researchers at the Moores Cancer Center and Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, UC San Diego used a complex computer prediction model to determine that intake of vitamin D3 and calcium would prevent 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer annually in the US and Canada. The researchers model also predicted that 75% of deaths from these cancers could be prevented with adequate intake of vitamin D3 and calcium. Dr. Cedric Garland, UCSD School of Medicine, lead researcher on the study discusses the implications of this finding and the proposed actions.

Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention, August 26, 2009 – Tamoxifen is an estrogen-blocking drug. This class of medication is specifically designed to block the estrogen receptor to prevent the growth of breast cancer cells. But, unfortunately, not all breast cancers have the estrogen receptor. Those that don’t are usually more aggressive and metastasize more rapidly.

Researchers from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle looked at 728 women diagnosed with breast cancer. Those women were compared to 367 others diagnosed with both a first and second breast cancer.

The main finding from the study, published online Tuesday in the journal Cancer Research, was that tamoxifen lowered the risk of any second breast cancer overall by about half, said lead author Dr. Christopher Li.

“For the estrogen receptor-positive cancer, we have targeted therapy that again has been proven to again reduce mortality,” said Li. “That’s one of the reasons why ER-negative cancers are more worrisome because we don’t have a targeted treatment for them.”

Li said it’s important to remember that any treatment has risks and benefits associated with it, and tamoxifen is no exception.

Tamoxifen lowers breast cancer patients’ risk of dying of the disease, and has also been shown to lower a woman’s risk of developing a recurrent breast cancer and a second breast cancer, he noted. But use of tamoxifen also comes with risk of stroke, as well as the risk of endometrial cancer, he added.

“So here we’re finding that we’re adding potentially another risk to the risk-benefit equation,” Li said. “We’re finding that there is this increased risk in this more aggressive subtype of second breast cancer. However, we also overall found using tamoxifen did lower the risk of any type of second breast cancer overall.”

“For that reason, we don’t really think that this study changes the overall risk-benefit equation because the benefits for most women who are eligible to use this treatment are going to still outweigh the risks.”

Every tumour is a mix of receptor-positive and receptor-negative cells, she said. If the types of cells that predominate are receptor-negative, it gets read as an increased risk of receptor-negative breast cancer if tamoxifen is taken for five or more years.

Dr. Jay Harness,Tamoxifen And The Side Effects put up by Sandy Hutchens.

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