This may come as good news for many women in Saudi Arabia, which has a high incidence of breast cancer cases. US geneticists have identified a super gene which causes breast cancer to metastasise, the deadly process by which the disease spreads to other organs, according to a study released Wednesday. This finding may be especially beneficial for Saudi women, because according to statistics 70 percent of cases here are not reported until they are at a very advance stage. And 30 percent of Saudi patients are under 40 years of age, compared to 5 percent in the US. Described by the researchers as a “master regulator,” the SATB1 gene alters the behavior of at least 1,000 other genes within tumor cells, said the study, published in the British journal Nature. When over-activated it makes cancer cells proliferate, and when neutralized the gene stops the cells from dividing and migrating, the study reported. “SATB1 will be a remarkable target for cancer therapy,” lead scientist Termumi Kohwi-Shigematsu of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, was quoted as saying by a news agency. The findings could not only pave the way to diagnostic tools that show the likelihood of the disease spreading, she said, but to drugs that could prevent or treat metastasis in breast cancer as well. Up to now, it was impossible to predict whether cancer cells in a tumor were destined to invade neighboring tissue, travel through the blood system and form secondary tumors elsewhere in the body. But the SATB1 protein is just such a marker. A tumor in which it is activated “is destined to metastasise,” said Kohwi-Shigematsu. In experiments on mice, Kohwi-Shigematsu and colleagues “knocked down,” or deactivated, the SATB1 gene by removing certain RNAs in the tumor cells upon which the gene depends for multiplying. Translating the study's findings into an effective treatment for cancer would require targeting only the tumors in which the SATB1 gene has become overly active. Kohwi-Shigematsu is working on a means for delivering an inhibitor via microscopic nanocapsules, and said trials on humans could start within a couple of years. Prognostic tools could be available within a year.
