Cancer in general can be hard on people. Breast cancer is especially hard on women, more so if breast cancer is aggressive. Drug resistance is studied in breast cancer.
Cancer treatment could sometimes be elusive. Early breast cancer detection has always been crucial, but a later detection would prove to be difficult. Breast cancer cells have a way of evading treatment, and this would be most so during the later stages of breast cancer.
One particular type of breast cancer is aggressive. Researchers are focusing on this type of breast cancer since it has a tendency to bypass treatment. Researchers from the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center have seen how this particular type of breast cancer could get past treatment.
Trametinib is the approved treatment used for breast cancer by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, the aggressive breast cancer type could bypass this. Gary L. Johnson, one of the researchers from UNC Lineberger and a Kenan Distinguished Professor at the UNC School of Medicine said that this breast cancer can be responsive early on, but grows a resistance as its tumor develops.
Johnson describes this type of resistance as adaptive programming, wherein the genome of the cancer learns to adapt to treatment. Johnson has said that the researchers have found a possible solution to it, according to Science Daily. The solution has made the cancer to be vulnerable to the treatment.
The solution has used an advanced genetic sequencing technology in order to make the cancer vulnerable to treatment. The solution calls for a treatment that blocks BRD4, one of the genes that causes breast cancer cells to be resistant. The new treatment has been paired along with trametinib to see if it would be effective, as News Wise reports.
A clinical trial has been made by UNC Lineberger member Lisa A. Carey, M.D. She is from the North Carolina Cancer Hospital. She is also a Richardson and Marilyn Jacobs Preyer Distinguished Professor in Breast Cancer Research.
Low doses of trametinib has been used on them, and found that the cancer has been resistant to it. Additional research would be done for the application of the new treatment together with trametinib. Cancer could be aggressive and could resist treatment. Drug resistance has been studied in breast cancer. A researcher has said immunotherapy could be the cure for HIV.
