NurseWeek

Gene linked to worst breast cancer

By Noel Holton
Health24News
October 17, 2000


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Washington (H24N). A particularly invasive form of cancer, known as inflammatory breast cancer, or IBC, may be caused by a gene called RhoC GTPase, according to researchers at the University of Michigan.

Too much RhoC GTPase production in otherwise normal cells, they explain, triggers the kind of rapid formation of cell colonies with invasive tendencies that characterize inflammatory breast cancer. The researchers’ findings are published in the Oct. 15 issue of the journal Cancer Research.

"This is the first time that the RhoC gene has been implicated in breast cancer, and we suspect that its importance may go beyond the inflammatory form of the disease to include other aggressive breast tumors," said Sofia Merajver, MD, associate professor of internal medicine in the University of Michigan Health System.

Inflammatory breast cancer, considered the most deadly form of locally advanced breast cancer, gets its name from the red color it turns affected breasts. It also causes the skin to pucker and the nipples to retract.

IBC metastasizes or spreads very quickly from tumors to surrounding areas of the body. By the time it is diagnosed, it has almost always invaded the lymph nodes. IBC accounts for only 6 percent of all breast cancer diagnoses in the United States each year. Five years after diagnoses, however, researchers reported that only 45 percent of IBC patients survive, compared to nearly 97 percent of women who are diagnosed with all forms of breast cancer at an early stage, according to the American Cancer Society.

The University of Michigan researchers found that the RhoC GTPase gene was overexpressed in 90 percent of the tumor samples it extracted from women with IBC.

"This discovery raises the possibility of a future test or therapeutic agent that could help physicians and patients launch a counterattack as aggressive as the disease itself," said Kenneth van Golen, one of the study’s lead authors.