In a new study, researchers found that drugs used to treat high cholesterol could interfere with the way breast cancer cells adapt to the microenvironment in the brain, preventing cancer from taking hold.
Patients with breast cancer who experience this type of metastasis typically survive for only months after diagnosis.
The research was conducted by a team at the University of Notre Dame.
Statins, a group of drugs commonly prescribed for those with high cholesterol, were shown to interfere with a pathway that allows a cancer cell to recycle cell surface proteins and therefore make it easier for cancer cells to live within the brain.
The team found the protein Rab11b brings “recycled” proteins back to the surface like a fast-moving Ferris wheel.
Statins could suppress breast cancer survival in the brain by inhibiting the ability of Rab11b to recycle surface proteins. As a result of less recycling, the surface of metastatic tumor cells is less sticky.
This limits the survival of cancer cells and ultimately slows the rate of tumor colonization in the brain microenvironment.
The team seeks uses of already-FDA-approved drugs to target cancer metastasis because they are already known to be safe, which allows for quicker testing without waiting several years for new therapeutics to be developed and tested.
One author of the study is Siyuan Zhang, the Dee Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.
The study is published in Nature Communications.
Copyright © 2020 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
