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PARIS: Geneticists have identified a super gene that
causes breast cancer to metastasize, the deadly process by which the
disease spreads to other organs, according to a study released
Wednesday.
Described by the US researchers
as a “master regulator,” the SATB1 gene alters the behavior of
at least 1,000 other genes within tumor cells, the study, published
in the British journal Nature, said.
It makes cancer cells proliferate
when over-activated, while the gene stops the cells from dividing
and migrating when neutralized, the study reported.
“SATB1 will be a remarkable
target for cancer therapy,” lead scientist Termumi
Kohwi-Shigematsu of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in
Berkeley, California, told Agence France-Presse.
The findings could not only pave
the way to diagnostic tools that show the likelihood of the disease
spreading, she said, but to drugs that could prevent or treat
metastasis in breast cancer as well.
Up to now, it was impossible to
predict whether cancer cells in a tumor were destined to invade
neighboring tissue, travel through the blood system and form
secondary tumors elsewhere in the body. But the SATB1 protein is
just such a marker. A tumor in which it is activated “is destined
to metastasize,” said Kohwi-Shigematsu.
Metastasis is the overwhelming
cause of death in patients with solid tumors. Less than 10 percent
of women with metastatic breast cancer survive beyond a decade, and
just over a quarter make it past five years.
--AFP
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