A collaborative study between the IDIBAPS – Hospital Clínic of Barcelona and the Hospital del Mar de Barcelona – has discovered a predictive factor in the resistance to chemotherapy in breast cancer and established possible therapeutic targets for the improvement of this treatment. This study was published in the journal Endocrine-Related Cancer.
The study shows clinical evidence of the role played by the nuclear factor (NF)-?B in breast cancer and makes it a key target for new treatments, both to initially diagnose the disease and to predict a low chemotherapeutic response. If this is the case, the blocking of the factor prior to treatment is needed in order to increase the efficiency of the chemotherapy. The results of this study are the first to be published in which nuclear factor (NF)-?B, which promotes the survival of cells, has been specifically studied in order to observe its relevance in the prediction of response to chemotherapy.
This study has contributed to the understanding of one of the resistance mechanisms to chemotherapy prior to surgery in patients with locally advanced breast cancer, say the authors. “Results show that patients with breast cancer who presented activated nuclear factor (NF)-?B in tumor cells prior to treatment with chemotherapy, only achieve 20% response to chemotherapy”, explains Dr. Tusquets, “whereas if (NF)-?B is not activated, chemotherapy response increases up to 91%”. Moreover, the relevance of this factor has been confirmed since the activation of (NF)-?B increases after chemotherapy exposure, which could explain part of the acquired chemotherapy resistance during treatment.
“Not only can we predict chemotherapy response of tumor before treatment is started, but we can also search for a mechanism to act upon the nuclear factor (NF)-?B, deactivate it and permit an efficient chemotherapy” concludes Dr. Montagut, the author of the study.
SOURCES:
Endocrine-Related Cancer, June 2006
IDIBAPS – Institut d’ Investigacions Biomediques August Pi i Sunver (http://www.idibaps.ub.edu)
