Page 84 2024 PAINT THE PAPER PINK Lincoln Daily News Oct/Nov 2024 Scientists ID Signals That May Trigger BRCA1 Breast Cancer An ACS-funded researcher may have found a future drug target to help prevent BRCA1related breast cancer – signals from the stroma to the epithelium. The Challenge About 55% to 72% of women who inherit a damaged (mutated) BRCA1 gene will develop breast cancer by age 70 or 80. That’s a much higher risk compared to women in the general population who don’t have the mutant gene - about 13% of them will develop the disease. Plus, people who have inherited this damaged gene tend to develop cancer at younger ages than people who haven’t, and they’re more likely to develop cancer in both breasts. These high risks have long kept scientists seeking answers about why and how BRCA1associated breast cancer develops. They hope that a better understanding of this cancer’s biological causes will lead to better prevention, detection, and treatment. About 10% of breast cancers develop in lobules and are called invasive lobular carcinomas. Most often, breast cancers develop in the milk ducts and are called invasive ductal carcinomas. The word carcinoma describes tumors that start in the epithelial cells. Many studies have found that when a damaged BRCA1 gene leads to breast cancer, it starts with changes in the epithelial cells that line the inside of the ducts, called luminal cells. The specific cells where cancer starts are often called luminal progenitor cells. There have been fewer studies about how other types of breast cells, particularly stromal cells, may change and contribute to the development of cancer, especially as it relates to hereditary genetic mutations such as BRCA1. The Research American Cancer Society (ACS) research scholar, Kai Kessenbrock, PhD, studies how cells in the breast develop early changes that lead to breast cancer, specifically BRCA1associated breast tumors. He recently published a study in Nature Genetics that involved mice with an inherited mutated BRCA1 gene. The team also analyzed pre-cancerous tissue with and without BRCA1 mutations in a 3D cellular model in the lab. In the past, scientists were primarily focused on BRCA1’s effect on epithelial cells. In our lab, we found that women with germline BRCA1 mutations have distinct precancerous changes within various stromal cells—those cells outside of and around the ducts," Kessenbrock says. Continued --
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