Think Pinker

According to Top Cancer News, a new study printed in Clinical and Translational Sciences, showed Notch activity, which governs stem cell expansion in breast cancer, but when the therapy targeted cyclin D1, which is a protein, it looks like it may block cancerous stem cells from expanding. That’s very exciting news.

It’s long been known that breast cancer stem cells play a role in the resistance to cancer therapy and that they play a role in breast cancer tumours reoccurring. But just how and what occurred had not yet been solved.

The study took place at Thomas Jefferson University and it was Dr. Richard Pestell who was in charge. This was the first study to actually show that for breast cancer to grow in mice there must actually be cyclin present. According to Pestell the hope is that treatments can now be improved with this extra information and understanding, thus reducing the recurrence of breast cancer tumours.

Whether its breast cancer or other forms of cancer, it occurs because of multiple genetic lesions that are a result of an unregulated cell cycle. According to Dr. Richard Pestell, they have developed tissue-specific inducible transgenic expression systems and are using this transgenic approach to examine the role of cyclin D1, the CDKI in breast and prostate cancer.

Now while some of this might sound a little bit like a foreign language you haven’t learned, the message to take home here is that yet again there is more knowledge and a better understanding of how breast cancer develops and what may or may not work to cure it.

Currently a variety of treatments are used including mastectomy. The success rate has certainly increased in the past decade but we are still far from being able to pat ourselves on the back and claim that breast cancer has been eradicated, and while researchers continue to diligently work for that cure, the work of Dr. Richard Pestell takes us just one-step closer.