Researchers from Research Institute of the MUHC and McGill University have identified environment surrounding breast cancer cells plays a crucial role in determining whether tumor cells grow and migrate or whether they fade away. The study, published in Nature Medicine, show that a tumor needs the support of the micro environment. The study show different patients have distinct tumor micro environments at a gene level. The gene profile of these distinct micro environments can be used to determine clinical outcome.

The research team has examined 53 breast cancer patients. They used a unique technique, laser capture micro dissection (LCM), to separate tumor cells from micro environment tissue. They compared the gene expression between the micro environment tissue and controls using micro-array analysis. From thousands of genes they identified 163, which correlated with patient outcome. A good outcome was defined as having no tumor metastasis and tumor migration and non-responsiveness to therapy was considered poor outcome.

From the original 163 genes, the team further identified a panel of 26 specific genes that could be used to accurately predict clinical outcome. This 26 gene-profile, called the stromal derived prognostic predictor (SDPP), was used to predict outcome from a second set of beast cancer patients. The next step involves developing this 26-gene predictor into a functional test.

The work involve a number of people including pathologists, surgeons, oncologists as well as researchers. This research was funded by from the Quebec Breast Cancer Foundation, Genome Canada-Genome Quebec, Quebec Valorisation-Recherche Quebec.
Source: Science Daily

Filed under Cancer

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