Can we finally stop breast cancer from spreading?!

News Article:

Thomas Jefferson University (2007, April 11). Scientists Identify Protein Key To Breast Cancer Spread, Potential New Drug Target. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 13, 2008, from

http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2007/04/070409181641.htm

Primary Scientific Article:

Xiaoming Ju, Sanjay Katiyar, Chenguang Wang, Manran Liu, Xuanmao Jiao, Shengwen Li, Jie Zhou, Jacob Turner, Michael P. Lisanti, Robert G. Russell, Susette C. Mueller, John Ojeifo, William S. Chen, Nissim Hay, and Richard G. Pestell. (2007, May). Akt1 Governs Breast Cancer Progression In Vivo. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104: 7438 – 7443.

Article Citing Primary Article:

Margit Hagel, Elizabeth L. George, Ann Kim, Rulla Tamimi, Sarah L. Opitz, Christopher E. Turner, Akira Imamoto, and Sheila M. Thomas (2002, Feb.). The Adaptor Protein Paxillin Is Essential for Normal Development in the Mouse and Is a Critical Transducer of Fibronectin Signaling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22: 901 - 915.

Xiao-ding Peng, Pei-Zhang Xu, Mei-Ling Chen, Annett Hahn-Windgassen, Jennifer Skeen, Joel Jacobs, Deepa Sundararajan, William S. Chen, Susan E. Crawford, Kevin G. Coleman, and Nissim Hay (2003, June). Dwarfism, Impaired Skin Development, Skeletal Muscle Atrophy, Delayed Bone Development, and Impeded Adipogenesis in Mice Lacking Akt1 and Akt2.Genes & Dev, 17: 1352 - 1365.

Manuel Morales-Ruiz, David Fulton, Grzegorz Sowa, Lucia R. Languino, Yasushi Fujio, Kenneth Walsh, and William C. Sessa (2000, Apr.). Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor–Stimulated Actin Reorganization and Migration of Endothelial Cells Is Regulated via the Serine/Threonine Kinase Akt. Circ. Res, 86: 892 - 896.

Summary:

Year after year, thousands of women are continuously being diagnosis with breast cancer and dying from this deadly disease as well. After skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common type of cancer that of woman in the United States today. As the years go on, researchers are getting closer and closer to discovering the causes of breast cancer and working on new drugs to block it from traveling all over the body and even help treat the disease all together.

Although more women are being diagnosed with it, fewer women are dying. Breast cancer tends to be more popular in women age 40 and up then the young. It is said that women should give there self monthly breast screening tests, clinical breast exams, and even yearly mammograms searching for any bumps, lumps, or other abnormalities, just in case cancer forms, so it can quickly be treated in it’s early stages.

Like many other cancers, breast cancer is said to be found best in its early stage. This is because if it is caught during this time, most likely it is not spread throughout the body as much as it could have been. The ScienceDaily article mentioned that any of the anti-Akt drugs that they are working on will work better on earlier cancers than the later ones, which is something that we already knew about. What the researchers for this study did, in order to find the protein that helps with the spreading of breast cancer, was changed the inheritance of the mice so they will lack Akt1. The way they did this was by raising the mice that was missing the Akt1 gene with other mice that held the ErbB2 oncogene. Once this part was done, researchers examined carefully looked at the role that Akt played.

In the end of there experiments, researchers came across the protein itself that helps spread breast cancer. They found that mice who didn’t have two copies of the gene said to produce Akt1 didn’t really get any tumors but, the ones that had one copy of it developed more tumors that where very small and grew in very slow. And mice that had both copies of Akt1 developed cancer very fast. This showed them that Akt1 is a gene that they should look into that can be a main cause of ErbB2 breast cancer development.

The primary scientific article and ScienceDaily have very similar information but, the primary scientific article gives more detail on there study, how they went about it, and more findings. Due to similar information that was found in the news article, I trust it’s findings but the primary scientific article is just a little bit more trustworthy due to the details and the information is coming directly from those who did the research. The question that is left for researchers is whether or not the patient’s samples that they were looking at is important in promoting metastasis breast cancer of other types? What I do wonder about as well, is how long did it take the researchers to actually do this study since they had to bread mice to come to the conclusions that they had? And why do patients who use Herceptin, a treatment for ErbB2-positive breast cancer, end up relapsing.