Researchers in
Australia report having isolated the stem cell that
controls the growth of breast tissue and having used it
to grow breasts in mice, developments that could lead
the way to new breast cancer treatments, Agence
France-Presse reports. The Melbourne-based scientists,
writing in Thursday's edition of the journal
Nature, say their findings will allow them to
study how normal breast tissue develops as well as how some
faulty cells that can become cancerous also appear in
otherwise healthy breast tissue.
The research may
be of particular importance to women who have already
been treated for breast cancer with chemotherapy, the
researchers say. Chemotherapy kills fast-replicating
cancer cells but may leave behind slower-dividing
faulty stem cells that can produce additional cancerous
cells in the future. By discovering how these faulty stem
cells function, the researchers could devise new
treatments to disable them or genetic therapies to
prevent them from being formed in the first place.
"Although many
people respond quite well to treatments such as
chemotherapy and radiotherapy, unfortunately a significant
proportion of people relapse with their disease at a
time subsequent to that," researcher Mark Shackleton
told ABC radio. "And it may be [that] treatments such
as chemotherapy and radiotherapy don't actually target
those cells within a mass of cancer."
But the
researchers caution that their discovery probably
won't yield any new treatments for another 10
to 20 years because of the complexity of the research.
(Advocate.com)
