Special RNA suppresses the formation of breast cancer cells

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. The development of breast cancer often originates from epithelial cells in the mammary gland – the very cells that specialise in milk production during and after pregnancy. A team of researchers from Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany), the university in Shenzhen (China) and Jena University Hospital (Germany) has taken a closer look at this specialisation process and deciphered a molecular mechanism that also appears to play an important role in cancer development. It may be possible to develop new diagnostic procedures and treatment methods for breast cancer based on these research findings.

Quelle: IDW Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

Reducing vitamin B5 slows breast cancer growth

Scientists have discovered in animal experiments that breast cancer cells heavily rely on vitamin B5 to grow and survive / Publication in ‘Nature Metabolism‘

Quelle: IDW Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

New insights into the prognostic power of gene expression signatures in breast cancer

When a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, the difficult question arises as to which type of treatment is the right one. Gene expression testing is one of the methods used by doctors to help make a prognosis about the course of the disease and, based on this, to select a suitable therapy. However, the reliability of these tests has not been fully established. Scientists from Leipzig University and the Pathologie Hamburg-West institute have now used machine learning to analyse large amounts of data on this question and found that gene expression signatures offer a high degree of certainty in prognosis, but not complete certainty.

Quelle: IDW Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

DeepMB: A Deep Learning Framework For High-Quality Optoacoustic Imaging in Real-Time

Researchers at Helmholtz Munich and the Technical University of Munich have made significant progress in advancing high-resolution optoacoustic imaging for clinical use. Their innovative deep-learning framework, known as DeepMB, holds great promise for patients dealing with a range of illnesses, including breast cancer, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and inflammatory bowel disease. Their findings have been now published in Nature Machine Intelligence.

Quelle: IDW Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

New potential therapeutic approach for HER2-positive breast cancer discovered

Resistance to HER2-targeted therapies can be a problem when treating patients with HER2-positive (HER2+) breast cancer. Therefore, the identification of new therapies for this patient group is important. Researchers at the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environments and Human Factors in Dortmund (IfADo) have already shown that the enzyme EDI3 is associated with changes in the metabolism of cancer cells. Their most recent results reveal that inhibiting EDI3 may be a new therapeutic target in patients with therapy-resistant ER-HER2+ breast cancer.

Quelle: IDW Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

Benefit of risk-based breast cancer screening is still unclear

The Austrian Institute for Health Technology Assessment (AIHTA) has analysed whether risk-based breast cancer screening has advantages over the conventional age-based screening programme. The central result: the current prediction models cannot satisfactorily predict the individual breast cancer risk. Only large studies which are currently in progress will provide robust data on whether women can expect health advantages compared to conventional practice. „In any case, such a system needs extensive preparation. Simply assessing risk factors in women without thinking about further consequences has no benefit for women,“ emphasises Ingrid Zechmeister-Koss, deputy director of the AIHTA.

Quelle: IDW Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

Half of all women experience false positive mammograms after 10 years of annual screening

Half of all women experience a false positive mammogram after 10 years of annual breast cancer screening with 3D mammography, a UC Davis-led study estimates. This risk was lower for women who had mammograms every other year. 3D screening showed slightly lower false positive results than standard mammography.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Molecular networks could explain racial disparity in triple negative breast cancer deaths

Different activity in two molecular networks could help explain why triple negative breast cancers tend to be more aggressive in African American (AA) women compared with white American (WA) women, a new study suggests.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

MRI may lower breast cancer deaths from variants in 3 genes

Annual MRI screenings starting at ages 30 to 35 may reduce breast-cancer mortality by more than 50% among women who carry certain genetic changes in three genes, according to a comparative modeling analysis. The predictions involve pathogenic variants in ATM, CHEK2 and PALB2 genes — which collectively are as prevalent as the much-reported BRCA1/2 gene mutations.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Pandemic upends breast cancer diagnoses

Researchers surveyed and compared early- and late-stage breast and colorectal cancer diagnoses in patients in pre-pandemic 2019 and in 2020, the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic, discovering fewer of the former and more of the latter as patients delayed care.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

New path to treat advanced triple-negative breast cancer

A new study shows inhibition of the CECR2 gene prevents triple-negative breast cancer from advancing or metastasizing.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Researchers discover new way to target secondary breast cancer that has spread to the brain

A study has revealed a potential new way to treat secondary breast cancer that has spread to the brain, using existing drugs.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Live cells discovered in human breast milk could aid breast cancer research

Researchers have explored the cellular changes that occur in human mammary tissue in lactating and non-lactating women, offering insight into the relationship between pregnancy, lactation, and breast cancer.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Players needed to solve puzzles and help advance cancer research

Scientists have just launched GENIGMA, a videogame that enlists players to solve puzzles while generating real-world scientific data that can detect alterations in genomic sequences and ultimately advance breast cancer research. The game was created to boost worldwide research efforts that depend on cancer cell lines, a critical resource used by scientists to study cancer and test new drugs to treat the disease. One of the limitations of cancer cell lines are a lack of high-resolution genome reference maps, which are necessary to help researchers interpret their scientific results.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Faulty BRCA genes linked to prostate and pancreatic cancers

Faulty versions of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are well known to increase the risk of breast cancer in men and women, and in ovarian cancer. Now BRCA1 and BRCA2 have been linked to several other cancers, including those that affect men.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

The first AI breast cancer sleuth that shows its work

Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence platform to analyze potentially cancerous lesions in mammography scans to determine if a patient should receive an invasive biopsy. But unlike its many predecessors, the algorithm is interpretable, meaning it shows physicians exactly how it came to its conclusions.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Researchers reduce breast cancer metastasis in animal models by modifying tumor electrical properties

Researchers have found that manipulating voltage patterns of tumor cells — using ion channel blockers already FDA-approved as treatments for other diseases — can in fact significantly reduce metastasis in animal models of breast cancer.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Reducing copper in the body alters cancer metabolism to reduce risk of aggressive breast cancer

Depleting copper levels may reduce the production of energy that cancer cells need to travel and establish themselves in other parts of the body by a process referred to as metastasis, according to a new study. The discovery of the underlying mechanisms of how copper depletion may help reduce metastasis in breast cancer will help inform the design of future clinical trials.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Cancer-spotting AI and human experts can be fooled by image-tampering attacks

Artificial intelligence (AI) models that evaluate medical images have potential to speed up and improve accuracy of cancer diagnoses, but they may also be vulnerable to cyberattacks. Researchers simulated an attack that falsified mammogram images, fooling both an AI breast cancer diagnosis model and human breast imaging radiologist experts.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Chemo helps breast cancer cells get their ‘foot in the door’ to the lungs

A new study adds to the evidence that chemotherapy enhances cancer’s spread beyond the primary tumor, showing how one chemo drug allows breast cancer cells to squeeze through and attach to blood vessel linings in the lungs.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Metabolic memory plays a key role in breast cancer relapse

Molecular targets for therapies that could prevent breast cancer recurrence have been identified by a group of scientists who analyzed tumor cells that proved resistant to the original treatment. Recent advances in early detection and targeted therapy have led to a growing success in treating breast cancer upon first presentation. This often is achieved by silencing tumor driving oncogenes and causing tumor regression.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Guidance on supplemental breast cancer screening for women with dense breast tissue

Researchers have made recommendations for clinicians and patients regarding supplemental screening for women with dense breast tissue.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Starting mammography at age 40 would reduce disparities in deaths for Black women

If Black women begin mammography screening every other year starting at age 40, breast cancer deaths could be reduced by 57 percent compared to starting screening 10 years later according to recent analyses.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Prediction models may reduce false-positives in MRI breast cancer screening

Prediction models based on clinical characteristics and imaging findings may help reduce the false-positive rate in women with dense breasts who undergo supplemental breast cancer screening with MRI, according to a new study.

Quelle: Sciencedaily

Researchers solve structure of BRCA2 protein complex important in DNA repair

The initials BRCA2 may be best known for a gene associated with many cases of breast cancer, and the protein encoded by the BRCA2 gene is critical to repairing breaks in DNA. The breakdown of this interaction is a hallmark of many cancers. Now scientists have determined the structure of a complex of two proteins — BRCA2 together with MEILB2 — that allows repairs to happen efficiently in cells undergoing cell-splitting, called meiosis. Their results have major implications for cancer and infertility.

Quelle: Sciencedaily