Novel treatment may benefit patients with triple-negative breast cancer
When examining higher doses of tamoxifen and its second mechanism of action separate from estrogen receptors, researchers discovered the drug’s potential to fight aggressive, triple-negative breast cancer.
While studying how basal-like breast cancer cells avoid the secondary effects of tamoxifen, doctoral student Hsing-Yu Chen and Mark Noble, PhD, professor of biomedical genetics at University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), and the URMC team discovered 2 proteins essential to this condition: c-Cbl, which controls the levels of multiple receptors critical for cancer cell function, and Cdc42, which can inhibit c-Cbl and create tumor resistance.
When researchers used an experimental drug compound (ML141) to target Cdc42, they found that c-Cbl function was restored to normal. The team also determined, in animal models and human cell cultures, that when ML141 and tamoxifen were combined, ML141 boosted tamoxifen’s capacity to cause cancer cell death and repress new cancer cell growth.
The study is published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine.