Private MD News

Researchers develop new therapy for treatment-resistant breast cancer

Category: Breast

There are relatively few effective treatments for women who have received lab test results indicating they have triple-negative breast cancer. This form of the disease is typically unresponsive to most therapies. However, a team of researchers from Boston University may have found a medication that stops the growth of cancer cells.

The majority of breast cancer therapies act on the hormone receptors of cancer cells. However, the cells in triple-negative cancer do not have any hormone receptors, making the standard treatments useless.

In the current study, the researchers looked for a way around this problem. They eventually found that medication can block the activity of a certain protein, which in turn enhances the expression of natural tumor-suppressing genes in breast cells. This restricted the growth of new tumor cells and the death of existing ones.

Because the study was conducted in cells taken from breast cancer patients, the findings are not immediately applicable to treatment in patients. However, the researchers said they believe their study could be used to develop new treatments for triple-negative breast cancer.