A new treatment for deadly triple negative breast cancers
Background
In Australia, over 15,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year. Among them, 15% will have triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), a very difficult to treat subtype of the disease. Triple negative breast cancers are lacking the key proteins that would make them responsive to the traditional breast cancer drugs, Tamoxifen and Herceptin.
Chemotherapy is the most common treatment for women with this type of breast cancer, but even if there is an initial response, the disease often comes back. New therapies that can effectively treat triple negative breast cancers and keep them from spreading are urgently needed.
The research
Professor Baxter’s previous work has shown that triple negative breast cancers often have very high levels of a protein called IGFBP-3. When present in high levels, this protein drives cancer growth and contributes to treatment resistance. The researchers have found that one way IGFBP-3 does this is by activating two proteins that act as cancer-stimulators. They have recently tested a combination of two drugs that directly inhibit these proteins and discovered this therapy, at the right dose, is effective in inhibiting breast cancer growth in the laboratory.
The impact
The team is continuing to study this drug combination in the laboratory, and their work is laying the foundation for clinical trials of this treatment for TNBC, as 5 year survival lags well behind that of other breast cancer types. The team will also determine whether the IGFBP-3 protein can be used as a marker to predict how a patient will respond to therapy. Ultimately, this research could open the door to a whole new way of managing and treating deadly breast cancers and improving the outlook for all women affected.