A team of researchers, led by Filippo Giancotti and Yuliya Pylayeva, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, has provided new insight into the initiation, maintenance, and progression to metastasis of a specific subset of human and mouse breast cancers.

Their findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

A marked proportion of breast cancers are associated with excessive activation of either Ras or PI3K signaling pathways, and many therapies aimed at disrupting these signaling pathways are under development. In this study, the FAK gene was found to be amplified in a substantial number of the human breast cancer samples analyzed.

Consistent with this having a role in tumor development, mice lacking the Fak gene in breast tissue were protected in a model of breast cancer caused by excessive activation of Ras and PI3K. Further, silencing the FAK gene arrested the growth of human breast cancer cells with excessive activation of either Ras or PI3K signaling pathways.

The authors therefore suggest that combined inhibition of FAK and either PI3K or Ras signaling may provide an effective approach for the treatment of breast cancer.

SOURCE:
Journal of Clinical Investigation, online edition, January 19, 2009