Scientists have offered fresh hope to hundreds of Scottish women with the discovery of a gene which causes one form of breast cancer to spread to other parts of the body.
The breakthrough could pave the way for new treatments for the aggressive HER2 positive strain of the disease, which accounts for one in five of all breast cancer cases.
The find is particularly significant as there are already drugs in development which could kill the cancer cells that rely on this gene.
The expert who led the research hopes a treatment might be available within a decade, rather than the 35 years it normally takes to create a medicine from scratch.
The breakthrough has been welcomed by Monty’s Maggie’s Appeal, which is working with the Press and Journal on a £3million campaign to open a new cancer support centre in Aberdeen.
Laura Lee, chief executive of the charity, Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres, said it underlined the need for such an organisation which works with patients and their loved ones to help them understand the sometimes bewildering range of treatment options available to them.
The discovery was made by the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, where Maggie’s founder, Maggie Keswick Jencks, was treated. The cancer then spread to her liver, bone and bone marrow.
The team has pinpointed the role of the C35 gene in encouraging the spread of the HER2 positive strain, which affects about 800 women in Scotland and 9,000 in the UK each year.
Drugs being developed could potentially kill the cancer cells which rely on this gene by disabling the protein that makes it work.
Research leader Dr Elad Katz, of Edinburgh University, said it might be possible to use them alongside the existing treatment, Herceptin – which does not help all patients and can stop working after a time – to increase the chances of success.
“The thing about HER2 is that it is a particularly aggressive form of cancer, and what kills patients more often than not is the spread of the disease out of the breast to other organs, the brain, bone, lungs etcetera,” he said.
“The role of C35 induces the spread, so if a patient with HER2 cancer also has the C35 gene, it is more likely to migrate from the breast.
“Identifying this gene’s key role is a significant finding. We are at an early stage, but there is now a real possibility there could be a new treatment for women with HER2 positive breast cancer.”
Dr Katz said pharmaceutical companies had been developing drugs which target the particular molecules involved in the process for about 20 years while scientists explored a range of possible applications.
“There is the potential to develop a treatment much more quickly if patient trials support our findings.
“Once we might have expected it to take 35 years from publishing a paper to coming up with a treatment. For this, I would hope we would be talking in single digits.”
Ms Lee, who was Maggie’s oncology nurse at the Western General when she came up with the idea for cancer support centres, said the research, published in the British Journal of Cancer, was encouraging, but still at an early stage.
“It’s good news, although there are no clinical applications just yet,” she said.
“What it highlights is the shift that is coming, not just for breast cancer but all types of cancer, to treatments that are even more bespoke. Even just 10 years ago there was very much a ‘one size fits all’ approach to treatment but in future it will be more tailored to individual patients.”
With that comes more anxiety for patients, she added.
“Someone sitting in a breast cancer unit having treatment while the person next to them has something very different might be thinking ‘She has that gene and I don’t, so what does it mean for me?’ Or ‘She is getting this treatment, why can’t I?’ That’s why it’s important that Maggie’s helps patients through the breadth of detailed information to get to what is relevant to them.”
The Monty’s Maggie’s Appeal is being led by Maggie’s and the Elizabeth Montgomerie Foundation – set up by the Scottish golfer Colin Montgomerie in memory of his mother who died from cancer – with the backing of the Press and Journal.
It aims to raise £3million to build a Maggie’s centre to offer practical and emotional care to patients receiving cancer treatment at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
Since the first Maggie’s support centre opened at the Western General, five more have followed, including the award-winning buildings at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee and Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.
Aberdeen is the only major city in Scotland not to have a Maggie’s centre at present.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK, accounting for one in three of all female cancers and affecting one in nine women in their lifetime.
About 4,000 women and 20 men in Scotland are told they have the disease every year.