A research paper was recently published inOncotarget, titled A new group of genes that produce endocrine resistance in breast cancer, as well as an exciting gene expression analysis.
Breast cancer (BC) is the most common type of cancer diagnosed in women. Among female cancer deaths, BC is the second largest cause of death worldwide.
endocrine therapy is effective in treating estrogen receptor-positive breast cancers. However, many ER-positive tumors are unresponsive to endocrine therapy, and tumor regrowth may occur after treatment. Although some genetic mutations may imply resistance to endocrine therapy, the reasons for the rise of these limitations are usually unknown.
Endocrine therapies have proven to be effective in improving cancer outcomes; however, the development of endocrine resistance or resistance to inhibition of ER actions remains a roadblock in breast cancer treatment.
Researchers from UTHealth Houston, the University of Chicago, the University of Texas'' Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Houston explored the dynamic behavior of the entire gene population in order to identify new genes that play a critical role in the development and progression of endocrine-resistant breast cancer.
We used a recently developed statistical method to investigate the dynamics of gene expression during the development of endocrine resistance and identified a new group of genes whose time course expression significantly altered during cell modeling of endocrine resistant BC development.
Researchers applied their recent statistical pipeline to datasets from a public functional genomics repository to better understand the process of developing and advancing endocrine resistance.
34 new genes were discovered during cell modeling of endocrine-resistant breast cancer. Moreover, expression of a subset of these genes was also differentially expressed in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) as compared to ER-positive BC.
The findings suggest that shared genetic abilities may be to the base of the development of BC and TNBC that are resistant to endocriny.
