Proteins to predict recurrence?

Protein May Predict Risk Of Breast Cancer Relapse
Protein Pair Acts Like Accelerator Brake

UPDATED: 12:37 p.m. EST January 20 2004

PROVIDENCE R.I. -- Scientists may have found a protein marker that can predict which breast cancer patients will relapse.



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The recurrence rate for women in the early stages is about 10 to 15 percent but there's no way of knowing which women will be affected.

Dr. Raymond Frackelton of Roger Williams Medical Center in Providence and his colleagues poured more than 116 specimens from breast cancer patients in search of a protein responsible for breast cancers that tend to recur.

They didn't find one protein but two.

"When we first broke the code and realized what we found I basically couldn't sleep for a couple of months -- not literally -- but I'd wake up in the middle of the night and just wanting to move this forward as quickly as possible " Frackelton said.

What the researchers identified were a pair of proteins known as Shc; one of them is an activated form.

"So simplistically the activated form acts like an accelerator pushing events forward pushing proliferation and aggressiveness of the tumor forward " Frackelton said.

The other protein they identified acts like a brake inhibiting the progression.

The researchers found that women with more of the activated form of the protein and less of the other were most likely to relapse.

"The way that this is very big is trying to identify the women who are going to do poorly with our conventional treatments our present wisdom " researcher Dr. Gerald Elfenbein said. "If we can identify in advance the women who are not going to do well in the long run then we can devise and offer treatments that are more aggressive in the hope of preventing them from going to relapse and then death from the disease.

The findings were published in the Oct. 15 2003 issue of Cancer Research.

There's a move to expand the research to include many hundreds perhaps even thousands of tumor specimens from breast cancer patients around the country to confirm the results.

The hope is to eventually devise a test that could be used in conjunction with other emerging tests to help more accurately identify high-risk women.