Breast Cancer, Hopes for Treatment with 2 Anti-Cancer Drugs: The Study

An Italian study offers hope for new precision treatments against breast cancer resistant to anti-cancer hormone therapies. The work, by scientists from the universities of Salerno and Federico II of Naples, is published in ‘Molecular Cancer’ and supported by the Airc Foundation for Cancer Research and the Ministry of University and Research (Research Projects of Relevant National Interest). The authors have identified a protein that helps tumors escape treatment, testing new precision drugs that have proven effective in the laboratory.

In recent years – recalls a note from the University of Salerno – among the most used molecular targeted therapies against breast cancer, the one based on estrogen antagonists has proven to be quite effective in the majority of cases in which the tumor is positive for hormone receptors (Er alpha and Pgr). In a significant fraction of patients, however, after a more or less long interval of time the disease develops resistance to these treatments and the tumor reappears.

The group coordinated by Alessandro Weisz and Giovanni Nassa of the Department of Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry of the Salerno Medical School of the University of Salerno and the Center for Genomic Research for Health (CRGS), in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Naples Federico II, discovered that the protein encoded by the Brpf1 gene plays a key role in the survival of tumor cells, acting as a mediator of the effects of estrogen hormones, a determining factor in the growth and propagation of these tumors.

A protein in the crosshairs

The authors have demonstrated that it is possible to inhibit the protein with specific drugs, in particular with GSK5959 and GSK6853. “In the laboratory – reports the University of Salerno – these drugs block the proliferation and induce the death of cells, in particular those of tumors resistant to hormone therapy”.

How the treatment works

“The effects – the authors describe – are specific: the drug-induced block on the activity of Brpf1 in turn affects the functions of genes that control cell growth. In particular, the intracellular mechanism of response to estrogen hormones on the cell genome via the nuclear receptor Er alpha is inhibited. An effective molecular target has thus been discovered for a possible precision therapy of these serious forms of cancer resistant to the treatments used up to now to cure it”.