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Italian researchers make breast-cancer breakthrough
An Italian team has made a major breakthrough in breast-cancer research, discovering the protein that lies behind the spread of breast tumors, Italian media reported on Monday.

After years of research that started with genes in fruit flies, researchers in Naples, Sardinia and Milan have identified the protein, dubbed h-prune, and the gene that makes it.

The discovery of the gene and the mechanism by which the protein works has been described in an article published in the magazine Cancer Cell.

Practical applications are not far off, the authors say.

This may lead to the development of drugs that can stop the killer protein in its tracks.

The researchers say they have identified a drug that could muffle the activity of the h-prune gene, but they are already thinking of the next step.

The research program, funded by the Italian Association for Cancer Research AIRC, was carried out by a team led by Massimo Zollo of the Tigem cancer research laboratory in Naples.

Zollo worked with Giuseppe Palmieri of the National Research Center's Institute of Population Genetics in Alghero, Sardinia.