A research
project in Portugal, now nearing completion, has developed a new drug that will
likely offer an unprecedented remedy for women with a particularly aggressive
form of breast cancer.
Triple
negative breast cancer (TNBC) severely reduces the chances of survival. It
accounts for about 15% of cancer cases, but no specific treatment has been
available. The best that could be done so far was to surgically remove the
tumour and give a cocktail of chemotherapy drugs that are known to work against
other types of cancer.
“After some
time the body often creates defences against this cocktail and it no longer
works,” says Dr Andrena Valenta who works at the University of Lisbon. Once
such resilience has set in the cancer becomes all the more aggressive
Dr Valenta
and her research partner, Dr Helena Garcia, have been concentrating on a
one-year project called CanceResolution that runs to the end of this month. It
is focused on ruthenium, a rare silvery-white metal known to be well tolerated
by the human body. Their experiments show that a ruthenium-based drug they and
their team have developed may halt the growth of TNBC cells and stop them from
spreading.
“So far from
a toxicity point of view, the drug’s profile looks good,” says Dr Garcia. “Our
studies show that 24 hours after administrating the drug, there’s a high
concentration of the compound in the tumour, but in the surrounding blood and
urine it’s almost gone. This means the secondary effects of our drug should be
low.”
In Portugal
as in other European countries, breast cancer is the most common form of cancer
among women. The public awareness, diagnosis, treatment and survival rates of
early cancer have all increased over the past decade. Just before a three-day
international conference on all this was being held in Berlin last week, a
panel of experts in the United States published a report aimed at greatly
reducing all forms of this deadly disease.
The report
advised that all women should be screened for breast cancer every other year
from the age of 40. In Portugal it has been generally accepted that women
should be screened every other year between the ages of 50 and 69. With early
detection and prevention, patients are said to have an 80% chance of survival.
Mammogram tests involving small doses of X-ray can detect early signs.
Normal
chemotherapy treatment can have very harsh side-effects, ranging from nausea
and lack of appetite to exhaustion and hair loss. This is because drugs that
attack the cells of fast-growing tumour cells often attack healthy cells as
well. Radiography is not a cell-based treatment, but it too can mean patients
suffering severe side-effects. Surgery in which cancer tissue is cut out can be
a fast method to remove a tumour, but if cancer tissue remains undiscovered,
the cancer may continue to develop.
Many
cancer-inhibiting oral drugs have been licensed and put on the market to help
with the treatment of such illnesses as chronic myeloid leukaemia and melanoma,
as well as breast cancer. Unfortunately, there are numerous safety concerns
with these oral drugs. The absorption rate of about half of them is influenced
by the patient’s diet, so their use confronts patients and medical staff with
additional challenges. A multidisciplinary approach may be necessary, involving
physicians, nurses and pharmacists.
Much hope is
offered by therapies said to fight cancer by reinforcing the body’s immune
system. When fully functional, our immune system protects us against infections.
Many clinical reports have been published about relatively new therapies.
Dendritic cell-based treatment uses the patient’s own blood cells to boost the
immune system so that it recognises and destroys cancer cells.
There is
good reason to be optimistic about future trends in Portugal as a consortium
that brings together the Champalimaud Foundation and several Portuguese
companies funded by the Plano de Resiliencia e recuperacao has a project called
‘MetaBreast’ to improve breast cancer surgery through digital technology.
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