Just a Hint for New Treatments

In honor of breast cancer awareness month, here is another article on breast cancer. This article focuses on new models of drug-resistance breast cancer to hint at better treatments.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine are transplanting breast tumors into mice; this proved that mice are excellent models of metastatic cancer. Since mice are excellent models, they can be used to search for better treatments in cancer. The tumors that are transplanted maintain the genetic errors that cause the cancer and be help identify the drivers of the tumor growth.

The cells are taken from the patients and are grown in a mouse that has no immune system. The tumors that are growing in the mouse are similar to the cancer that is in the patient. The study differs from others by first sequencing the whole genomes of the patient’s and the mouse’s tumor to identify how closely the tumor resemble each other. This helps to identify new mutations that might appear to drive a strong drug resistance exhibited of the tumors. Most of the mutations are found in the estrogen receptor.

Over the years patients who have stopped responding to anti-hormonal agents have changes in the estrogen receptor. Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer is resistant to standard treatment and is driven by presence of estrogen. Researchers are hoping to have a clinical test that will tell patients if the estrogen receptor is mutated. This study is a good start for designing cures for metastatic breast cancer.

I know there are a lot of debates on using animals as test subjects, but is this study so bad? Would you agree with it, if it showed a possible cure for breast cancer?

Here is the article for information on this study: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-09-drug-resistant-breast-cancer-hint-treatments.html