New Drug Target Identified for Lobular Breast Cancer
10 March 2008 - New drug target identified for lobular breast cancer Dr Jorge Reis-Filho and his team at The Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre at The Institute have identified a potential new drug target that could give hope to a subclass of breast cancer sufferers. Lobular breast cancer accounts for 10-15% of all breast cancer cases in the UK. Despite being treated with the best available therapies, approximately 30% of all patients with lobular cancer develop disease recurrence.
To identify new drug targets for this form of breast cancer, Dr Reis-Filho and colleagues performed a detailed analysis of breast cancer samples. “Half of the breast cancer samples we studied had increased copies of a gene called FGFR1.
Our group and others have shown that too much FGFR1 is associated with a poor prognosis, as well as an increased chance of cancer recurrence”, said Dr Reis-Filho. “Breast cancer is a complex disease made up of many subtypes. Currently, most breast cancers are treated similarly but we would like to be able to tailor treatment for each subtype. To do this, it is important that we first understand each subtype and find the genes that drive them. It is likely that some of the genes may be used as targets for drug development. The discovery of FGFR1 is the first step on the road to tailoring treatment for women diagnosed with lobular breast cancer.”
Dr Jorge Reis-Filho leads the Pathology Team at the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre.
