Breast cancer growth clues are discovered

BOSTON, Jul 13, 2005 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers in Boston announced Wednesday a discovery involving how breast cancer grows and migrates.

Using a super-efficient method they invented to search for a type of cancer-related change in all genes of a cell, Dana-Farber researchers discovered new evidence about how the "microenvironment" of breast cancers helps drive the cancers' growth and migration.

The scientists found non-cancerous cells surrounding young breast cancers -- the microenvironment -- undergo epigenetic modifications that affect genetic function and are passed to the cell's offspring, but don't alter a gene's actual structure or DNA.

The subtly altered gene functions send signals to the breast tumor cells to grow quickly and become more aggressive.

"This is the first demonstration that epigenetic (changes) occur in the supportive cells of a tumor, and this further emphasizes that surrounding cells play an active role in cancer formation and growth," said the study's lead author Dr. Kornelia Polyak. She said detection of the epigenetic alterations may provide a means of early cancer diagnosis or even predicting cancer risk.

The research appears as an advance online publication on the Nature Genetics web site, http://www.nature.com/ng.