Study Claims to have Answer to the Fight against an Aggressive Breast Cancer

A recent study is looking at the breast cancer subtype which is dangerous and is called “HER2-positive”. This is found to affect about one patient out of four. This is a disease wherein the tumor cells happen to over express a signaling protein which is called HER2. This study claims to have the answer to treat this aggressive form of breast cancer.

Women suffering from HER2-positive breast cancer use Herceptin as a treatment, but the medicine happen to stop working after a few years because it is resistant to the treatment. According to doctors the prognosis for patients is worse in HER2-positive breast cancer than from the other subtype of the illness.

A multi-institution team led by CSHL Professor Nicholas Tonks has found a means of inhibiting another protein that is up-regulated in HER2-positive breast cancer. The protein is known as PTP1B and it can play a critical role in developing tumors that would resonate HER2 signaling.

The researchers treated mice by modeling HER2-positive breast cancer that had a PTP1B inhibitor names MSI-1436. This was then inhibited signaling by HER2 proteins. This PTP1B was discovered by Dr. Tonks about 25 years ago.

This study was published online in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

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