Stole the receptor and began to thrive
Oncologists and cancer researchers know that 80% to 90% of breast cancer patients who develop metastases develop bone metastases. But so far researchers have not been able to offer an explanation for the phenomenon. Now Israeli researchers from the field of computer science and biology have found a possible explanation for the nesting of breast cancer cells on the bones - thanks to the "cancer gene map" they developed.
"In recent years, new data has been accumulating every day from studies that examine the activity of genes in various types of cancer. One of the problems is dealing with the abundance of data and extracting from them those that reflect key processes in the development of the tumor. The 'cancer gene map' helps solve this problem," says Prof. Nir Friedman from the School of Engineering and Computer Science at the Hebrew University, who developed the gene map with biologist Dr. Aviv Regev from Harvard University and computer science professionals Prof. Dafna Koller and Dr. Eran Stanford University faculty.
The team of researchers collected data on the degree of activity of approximately 15,000 genes in 2,000 cancer samples. "From the multitude of data available to us, we aimed to find groups of genes that are expressed in a coordinated manner - that is, their activity increases together or weakens together. Later, we wanted to know in which types of cancer these groups appear." When you know which genes are involved in the development of certain tumors, you can find the proteins that are the products of these genes, and thus begin to understand the essence of molecular processes related to tumor development. The proteins can serve as a target for drug development.
"We started with millions of data and arrived at a map that centralizes the knowledge in a compact way," says Friedman. "The result is a global map of the behavior of genes that are related to molecular processes typical of certain types of cancer." The gene map, which was published in the October issue of "Nature Genetics", is accessible from any computer connected to the Internet (web address: dags.stanford.edu/cancer http://). Scientists will be able to search for the genes that interest them and find out in which processes and in which tumors they participate.
The map helped the researchers discover that a group of genes involved in the regulation of bone density in healthy people and causing a message of growth to bone cells is also active in breast cancer cells. "In the healthy body, these genes are not expressed outside the cartilage and bone system. Breast cancer cells have 'acquired' the receptor that allows them to receive the growth message from the bone," says Friedman, "and while bones have another mechanism that knows how to stop the growth message as needed, breast cancer cells do not have this mechanism, so they are exposed to the signals that tell them to divide without the threshold Thus they bypass the cell's standard control mechanisms.
"We think that those patients whose tumor cells have this group of genes have a chance of developing bone metastases," Friedman adds, "but this still requires an orderly experimental proof." At the same time, the researchers also found a group of eight genes that work together in blood cancer.
"The findings of Friedman and his group are of great importance in our ability to identify subgroups of breast tumors," says Prof. Tamar Peretz, director of the Sharett Oncology Institute at the Hadassah Ein-Karem Medical Center. "We already know that breast cancer is not one disease, but a collection of diseases that differ from each other also in their ability to spread, in the sites of spread and in response to treatments. To date, our ability to identify the subgroups is small. If these initial findings are further confirmed, we will have a better and more accurate tool to identify different types of breast cancer and direct the treatment accordingly."
