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New hope may be dawning for victims of breast cancer, according to a renowned cancer researcher who spoke Saturday at 2517 Restaurant in Warsaw.
Several avenues of research are now being pursued that appear promising, said Dr. George Sledge, professor, clinician and researcher from Indiana University Cancer Center.
"The key is knowing how breast cancers grow and stopping them from growing," Sledge said. Breast cancer occurs more frequently in women than men, he said, because estrogen, the female reproductive hormone, drives the breast cancer growth.
Tamoxifen, a prescription drug now available to patients, deprives the breast cancer cell of estrogen by blocking estrogen's ability to stimulate cancer cell growth, he said. It also can decrease the likelihood of a new cancer developing in the opposite breast.
However, Tamoxifen also has serious side effects. If taken too long, it can increase a patient's risk of endometrial cancer - especially in women who have been through menopause - and can increase the risk of blood clots, stroke and uterine cancer.
"So Tamoxifen is a good stopgap, but it's not where we want to be in a few years," Sledge said.
An active area of research now is in developing SERMs, or "selective estrogen receptor modulators," he said. SERMs act like estrogen in some places, such as the uterus and liver, but not in others, such as the breast.
Another area of research involves an "epidermal growth factor receptor" on the surface of the cancer cell - "kind of like a catcher's mitt," Sledge said - that catches hormones that stimulate growth.
Referred to as HER2, he said, this growth factor is found in cancers that are more aggressive and grow more rapidly.
Because HER2 has been identified, Sledge said, "The way we've treated women in the past with chemotherapy is about to change.
"In the past, we had to treat everyone to hope to cure some."
Finding the presence of HER2 will let the doctor know exactly what drugs will be most effective and whether or not chemotherapy is required.
"So we'll be able to choose who'll get chemotherapy and what kind of chemotherapy they'll get," he said.
Herceptin is a drug that came on the market one year ago that hones in on the HER2-positive breast cancer cell and attacks it, he said.
The third treatment, and the one he thinks has the greatest potential in the long term, and one whose research began with a grant from the Catherine Peachey Fund Inc., is angiogenesis therapy.
"Breast cancer, like everything else on earth, requires nutrition to live and to grow," he said. "We know breast cancer can't grow past a few millimeters, the size of a head of a pin, without new blood vessels forming to feed it."
The cancer cell releases a hormone, called VEGF, that stimulates blood vessels to grow and feed the cancer tumor.
"The solution is to snip off new blood vessel formation and stop the growth of the cancer," he said.
Indiana University Cancer Center is now doing the first trial in the world that uses an antibody against VEGF, he said, and "we're already seeing tumors shrinking, even in advanced cancers."
He also said in five to 10 years doctors and scientists will be able to "fingerprint" a breast cancer tumor by using "high density CDNA arrays" to analyze the genes that are turned off or on in the woman's tumor. Doctors will then be able to tailor cancer treatment specifically to each woman.
Sledge, who lectures worldwide as a leading expert in breast cancer, was sponsored by the Catherine Peachey Fund Inc. Saturday's seminar was attended by approximately 200 people, many of whom are breast cancer patients.
