ST. LOUIS, March 3 (UPI) -- U.S. cancer experts say they've found a newly identified cancer biomarker might define a new subtype of breast cancer and offer a potential way to treat it.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis say their findings could further refine what recent breast cancer research has concluded -- that breast cancer is not one disease, but many.
The biomarker is found frequently in breast cancers and especially in those that have poorer outcomes. Researchers said it stems from overactivation of a gene called LRP6 (low-density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 6), which stimulates an important cell-growth signaling pathway. LRP6 can be inhibited by a protein that could become an effective drug against the breast cancer type.
"We found increased expression of the LRP6 gene in about a quarter of breast cancer specimens we examined, and we think LRP6 overexpression could be a marker for a new class of breast cancer," Professor Guojun Bu, who led the study, said. "In addition, we found that this biomarker is often associated with breast cancers that are either harder to treat or more likely to recur. We already have an agent that seems to be effective against LRP6-overexpressing tumors, which could someday become a therapy for tumors that right now have few treatment options."
The study appears in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
