New hope for the cure

Thursday, March 31, 2011 - 14:50 in Health & Medicine

With currently available early-detection methods for breast cancer, many people can be treated successfully. But for the 20 percent of patients with so-called triple-negative breast cancer, the outcome is bleak. Now, however, researchers from Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Baylor College of Medicine have identified a critical molecular component to the disease, one that suggests potential therapies involving combinations of FDA-approved, readily available drugs. “Whereas many basic discoveries have the potential to impact patients’ lives within 10, 20 or 30 years, this has the potential to impact patients’ lives within one year,” says Thomas Westbrook, formerly a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine since 2007. The research was published on March 4 in the journal Cell. Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive disease with few therapeutic options. Patients with such tumors can be treated only with chemotherapy. If the cancer...

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