What’s behind aggressive breast cancer
Harvard scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified an overactive network of growth-spurring genes that drive stem-like breast cancer cells enriched in triple-negative breast tumors, a typically aggressive cancer that is highly resistant to current therapies. Kornelia Polyak, a breast cancer geneticist at Dana-Farber, and colleagues found that a large proportion of cells within these tumors showed elevated activity in a network of genes called the Jak2/Stat3 pathway. Experiments have demonstrated that a drug specifically aimed to block this pathway halted the growth of such tumors in mice. The report will be published online June 1 by The Journal of Clinical Investigation in advance of its July print issue. Polyak, who is also an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, called the strategy very promising. “The discovery of these targets will rapidly lead to clinical trials with the hope of achieving one of the first specific therapies for triple-negative breast cancers,”...