The process of tumor cells detaching happens in breast cancer often even before it is diagnosed. Therefore, in this disease, the focus should be less on preventing the spread of cells and more on inhibiting the growth of cells that have already spread.
Despite significant advances in breast cancer treatment, the disease returns in about 30% of affected women—usually in another part of the body. Unfortunately, medicine remains nearly powerless against the advanced (or metastatic) form of the disease. "New therapeutic ideas and approaches are urgently needed," says Curzio Rüegg from the University of Freiburg.
Rüegg's group is pursuing a strategy that significantly differs from the main direction of global research efforts. While these efforts have contributed to uncovering many molecular mechanisms responsible for the metastasis process, prompting tumor cells to detach from the cellular matrix, breast cancer cells often separate from the primary tumor early in the disease. These circulating tumor cells manage to establish themselves elsewhere in the body before breast cancer is even detected. Then, there is a risk that they survive treatment as dormant micrometastases. What causes these cells to "wake up" after years of dormancy, divide, and form a new tumor as cancer stem cells, remains a mystery.
These are the questions that Rüegg’s research team aims to answer with their new scientific project, supported by the Swiss Cancer Research foundation. The focus is, on one hand, immune cells, which apparently promote the survival of cancer stem cells. On the other hand, the research group is also interested in specific proteins and signaling pathways that have been observed in brain metastases of breast cancer patients. "We want to decode the mechanisms that regulate the dormancy and growth of metastases," says Rüegg. He hopes that this knowledge will reveal how to stop the deadly progression of the disease.
KFS-4400-02-2018