Blood Cancer Drug Decitabine can Treat Invasive Breast Cancer

The drug decitabine, used to treat blood cancer, can also be used to treat aggressive breast cancer, according to a new study.

The study was conducted by researchers from Mayo Clinic in Florida who found that decitabine prevents breast cancer cells from spreading. The research was conducted on animal models.

Decitabine belongs to a class of drugs called hypomethylation agents and works by helping the bone marrow produce healthy cells.

"Treatment with low doses of decitabine in an animal model of breast cancer restored PRKD1 expression, reduced tumor size, and blocked metastasis to the lung," said Peter Storz, Ph.D., a biochemist and molecular biologist at Mayo Clinic in Florida and senior author of the study.

Decitabine turns-on the gene coding for protein kinase D1 (PRKD1), which stops the growth of cancer cells. Their study found that the gene was silenced in all breast cancers except one. One of the breast cancers where the gene is silenced is an aggressive triple negative breast cancer called invasive lobular carcinoma.

About 10% of all invasive breast cancers are invasive lobular carcinomas, according to breastcancer.org.

Sahra Borges, the first author of the study also prepared an assay that can be used to measure the amount of the gene that is silenced in a breast cancer subtype.

PRKD1 is associated with maintaining normal cell function in mammary gland and from keeping the cells from dislodging and moving elsewhere. According to researchers, it is easier to turn-on a silenced gene than changing the function of a mutated gene.

"Because we found that PRKD1 is increasingly silenced as breast cancer becomes aggressive and spreads, the hope is that this test can be further developed and used to predict which patients are at risk for cancer metastasis, and thus may benefit from decitabine," Dr. Borges said in a news release.

The study is published in the journal Breast Cancer Research.