Breast cancer trial starts with good news

Ann Arbor, Mich. -- U.S. scientists have discovered more about a common cell-to-cell signaling system that has good implications for a breast cancer drug trial just beginning.

In the groundbreaking trial, University of Michigan Medical School researchers are combining chemotherapy with a drug that blocks the Notch signaling pathway that helps regulate fetal development and is active in most organ systems throughout a person's life.

The aim is to use so-called Notch inhibitors to attack cancer stem cells. But a big concern is that the Notch inhibitors, while helping destroy cancer stem cells, might also kill healthy stem cells critical to a patient's survival.

However, a recent study conducted by UM Assistant Professor Ivan Maillard and colleagues might allay those fears. The researchers showed that blood-forming stem cells in mice survive when their Notch signaling pathway is experimentally blocked.

"Our data indicate that normal blood-forming stem cells should not be damaged by the Notch inhibitor drug being used in these patients," said Maillard.

The research that included scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research and the Harvard Medical School appears in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.