Marker identifies Breast Cancer patients likely to respond to TamoxifenScienceDaily (May 18, 2011), cancer researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson and an international team of collaborators have discovered a biomarker in breast cancer that can help you identify which women respond to anti-estrogen therapy.See also:Health & MedicineTherapyMenopause CancerCancerWomen HealthLung CancerBrain TumorColon of breast cancerreferenceof cancerMetastasisHormone breast replacement
The research appears in issue 16 may on-line of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The anti-estrogen drug tamoxifen in particular are widely used in patients diagnosed with estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. However, as many as one-third of women take tamoxifen fail to respond.
In this new study, investigators found that women whose tumors maintain the active form of Stat5 protein biomarker have an increased likelihood of responding to tamoxifen. Conversely, women treated with tamoxifen whose tumors had lacked active Stat5 fold increased risk of dying of breast cancer after adjustment for the effects of hormonal receptor markers and other data of standard pathology.
?Identification of predictive biomarkers in breast cancer will lead to a better individualized therapies tailored specifically to the cancer of every woman,? said Rui Hallgeir, M.D., Ph. d., Professor of Oncology, Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University and principal investigator of the study. ?No active form of Stat5 could help to identify a group of patients unlikely to respond to tamoxifen, so they can be offered alternative treatments and more aggressive.?
Stat5 protein is a DNA-binding factor that regulates the expression of certain genes, many of whom remain unknown. During pregnancy, Stat5 is activated by the hormone prolactin and stimulates the production of milk in the breast. Stat5 active is detectable even at lower levels in the tissues healthy non-pregnant women?s breasts. This study further showed that Stat5 active was lost in most tumors more aggressive and when these tumors metastasize to the lymph nodes.
In 2004, Rui and colleagues reported that women with breast cancer stage soon had higher rates of survival when their tumors express Stat5. Therefore, in two independent groups of patients with breast cancer that have not been treated with chemotherapy or anti-estrogen therapy, have further investigated the relationship between active Stat5 in tumor and whether the patient had breast cancer recurrence or who died of breast cancer for periods of up to 30 years. The team found consistency and favourable results of breast cancer when tumors maintained active Stat5.
Studies presented in this publication he used a retrospective of five major breast cancer patient, independent materials which included 1000 patients, giving studies a solid statistical basis. An advantage to optimize a marker as Stat5 is that the test for Stat5 is simple, inexpensive and can be adapted quickly to the systematic analysis of pathology laboratories using standard procedures.
?More work remains to be done, but we are optimistic about the usefulness of Stat5 as a biomarker,? said Amy Peck, PhD and lead author of the study. ?The team goes ahead with plans for a randomized prospective study with large numbers of patients to assess further the utility of Stat5 in managing and treating breast cancer.?
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