Scientists' discovery could stop breast cancer spreading

Times

4 days ago

Scottish scientists have made a discovery that could help stop breast cancer spreading to other parts of the body.
Experts at Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute and the University of Glasgow have found there are key metabolic changes that take place before tumours grow elsewhere.
Their work is being hailed as a significant breakthrough because it is often cancer moving from the breast that kills patients.
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Researchers writing in the journal EMBO Reports said identifying the metabolic changes offered a vital window to intervene. Detecting these changes early could allow therapies to stop cancer cells moving around the body and forming tumours elsewhere.
Dr Cassie Clarke, lead researcher, said: 'This study represents a major shift in how we think about preventing the spread of breast cancer. By targeting these metabolic changes as early as possible we could stop the cancer progressing and save lives.'
About 56,800 people are diagnosed with breast cancer in the United Kingdom each year and 11,300 people lose their lives to the disease.
Dr Catherine Elliott, Cancer Research UK's director of research, said: 'Discoveries in cancer research have made huge strides in making breast cancer a far more treatable disease than ever before.
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'However, metastasis — when cancer spreads — is a major factor in breast cancer becoming harder to treat, especially if the cancer returns months or even many years later.
'This discovery gives us new hope for detecting and stopping metastasis early and ensuring people have many more years with their families and loved ones.'
The study focused on how breast cancer changes the immune system so it cannot tackle cancer cells as they begin their spread. The researchers found that cancer changes the metabolism — the way cells make and use energy — of specific immune cells, resulting in them releasing a prominent metabolite called uracil.
Uracil is a molecule key to essential processes in the body which was found to help distant organs build a 'scaffold' to grow secondary tumours elsewhere in the body.
By blocking an enzyme called uridine phosphorylase-1 (UPP1), which produces uracil, the scientists were able to stop this scaffold forming in mice and restore the ability of the immune system to kill secondary cancer cells to prevent metastasis.
This opens the door to potentially powerful new tools to tackle cancer. Detecting uracil in the blood could help spot early signs of cancer spread, while blocking UPP1 with drugs could stop the spread before it starts.
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The research was funded by Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council, Breast Cancer Now and Pancreatic Cancer UK.
Simon Vincent, chief scientific officer at Breast Cancer Now, said: 'The researchers discovered that high levels of a protein called UPP1 may make some cancers, including breast cancer, more likely to spread to other parts of the body, where the disease becomes incurable.
'In mice, targeting the UPP1 protein before secondary breast cancer developed led to fewer secondary breast tumours and a boosted immune response in the lungs.
'Now we need more research to see if this new insight can be turned into new drugs that stop secondary breast cancer, and potentially other secondary cancers, in their tracks. With around 61,000 people living with secondary breast cancer in the UK, research like this is vital.'
The team are further investigating exactly how UPP1 changes the behaviour of immune cells, exploring the role of immune cell metabolism in early breast cancer initiation, and testing the ability of drugs that block immune cell metabolism to prevent cancer occurring.