Gene Could Be a New Biomarker For Diagnosis of TNBC

Scientists at A*STAR’s Genome Institute of Singapore, in collaboration with local clinicians and colleagues in the US, have identified a biomarker which is strongly associated with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), a highly aggressive carcinoma that often has early relapse and metastasis following chemotherapy. The newly identified biomarker, a gene called RASAL2, provides a target for developing new therapeutics designed to treat this often deadly disease.

TNBC is deadly because, unlike other types of breast cancers such as estrogen receptor (ER) positive or HER2 amplified breast tumours which have effective targeted therapy, TNBC tumours do not respond to targeted therapy.

Breast cancer has many subtypes, each with its own genetic makeup. As such, different subtypes behave differently in invasion and metastasis. Using breast cancer cell lines and genomic data from patient samples, molecular biologist Min Feng and her colleagues at the GIS adopted an integrated approach to search for genes whose deregulation may help explain the high metastatic potential of TNBC cells.

Link to the complete press release: http://bit.ly/1yL74kH