breast cancer

The bone-strengthening drug zoledronic acid (Zometa) can help fight metastatic breast cancer when given before surgery, suggests research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. When the drug was given along with chemotherapy for three months before breast cancer surgery, it reduced the number of women who had tumor cells in their bone marrow at the time of surgery.

A nationwide study has confirmed the benefit of giving estrogen-lowering drugs before surgery to breast cancer patients. The treatment increased the likelihood that women could undergo breast-conservation surgery, also called lumpectomy, instead of mastectomy.

Timothy J. Eberlein, MD, head of the Department of Surgery and director of the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, has been elected to the top leadership post in the American Surgical Association. He is president-elect for the 2010-11 year and will serve as president in 2011-12. 

Using powerful DNA sequencing technology to decode the genomes of cancer patients, scientists at the School of Medicine are getting an unprecedented look at the genetic basis of a highly lethal breast cancer that disproportionately affects younger women and those who are African-American, they report in the journal Nature.

Girls and young women who drink alcohol increase their risk of benign (noncancerous) breast disease, says a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Harvard University. Benign breast disease increases the risk for developing breast cancer. 

A newly identified cancer biomarker could define a new subtype of breast cancer as well as offer a potential way to treat it, say researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The biomarker is found frequently in breast cancers that have poorer outcomes and can be inhibited by a protein discovered in the same laboratory, which could become an effective drug against the breast cancer type.

When estrogen-lowering drugs no longer control metastatic breast cancer, the opposite strategy might work. Raising estrogen levels benefited 30 percent of women whose metastatic breast cancer no longer responded to standard anti-estrogen treatment, according to research conducted at the School of Medicine and collaborating institutions.

Courtesy of the National Cancer InstituteBreast cancer cells stained brown using an antibody that recognizes malignant cellsClinical studies are proving that the genetic profile of a tumor can greatly influence its response to anticancer treatments. WUSM physician Matthew Ellis is conducting research that aims to use the genetic profile of breast tumors to guide breast cancer therapy and ultimately to find new drugs for treating the disease.

Courtesy of the National Cancer InstituteBreast cancer cells stained brown using an antibody that recognizes malignant cellsClinical studies are proving that the genetic profile of a tumor can greatly influence its response to anticancer treatments. Matthew J. Ellis, M.D., Ph.D., at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is conducting research that aims to use the genetic profile of breast tumors to guide breast cancer therapy and ultimately to find new drugs for treating the disease.

On a mammogram, LCIS and ALH typically look like small deposits of calcium.In women whose initial breast biopsies revealed certain rare, yet benign breast conditions, more extensive follow-up surgical biopsies found that up to 25% of them actually had cancer in addition to these benign lesions. Most of the cancers were invasive, meaning the tumors had penetrated normal breast tissue and would require treatment. In the study, conducted at the School of Medicine, the women’s initial biopsies had revealed atypical lobular hyperplasia (ALH) or lobular carcinoma-in-situ (LCIS), conditions that increase the risk of breast cancer, but which are themselves considered benign.