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Researchers to study treatment for breast cancer growth hormone

Register-Herald - 7/31/2018

July 31--With a $1.6 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, a team of West Virginia University researchers is working on a treatment for a breast cancer growth hormone.

The protein, HER2 (or human epidermal growth factor receptor 2), is found in one in five breast cancers. It's associated with breast cancers that tend to grow and spread especially fast.

"Every healthy cell produces a normal amount of HER2, but HER2 is produced 10 to 20 times more in a cancer cell," said Yehenew Agazie, an associate professor of biochemistry at the WVU School of Medicine.

Agazie is researching an alternative treatment for HER2-positive breast cancers. The National Cancer Institute will allow him to study, over the next five years, the treatment's effectiveness in preclinical models.

"There are different types of drugs -- one of them being Herceptin -- that are anti-HER2," Agazie said. "However, treatments so far show that patients can still develop resistance against those drugs. One very important aspect is that all of those anti-HER2 drugs are targeting the already expressed HER2 protein without an impact on the process of expression."

The compound at the center of Agazie's new study is different. Instead of inactivating HER2 in cells, it prevents cells from making too much HER2 to begin with.

In 2017, Agazie and his former doctoral student, Zachary Hartmann, received a patent for the compound, which has shown promise at preventing breast cancer recurrence in previous laboratory studies.

Now Agazie and his research team will pinpoint how well the compound keeps cancer-causing genes from expressing themselves, prevents normal cells from becoming cancerous, and, if tumors do form, stops cancerous cells from overrunning the healthy, surrounding tissue. The group will also determine what dose of the compound maximizes its effectiveness and minimizes its toxicity.

In addition to Agazie, the research team includes Yon Rojanasakul, pharmaceutical sciences professor in the WVU School of Pharmacy; Sijin Wen, assistant professor of biostatistics in the WVU School of Public Health; and Paul Lockman, assistant vice president for experimental therapeutics at the WVU Health Sciences Center and associate director for translational research for the WVU Cancer Institute.

Another benefit of the compound is that it works even if a tumor has grown resistant to other drugs that target HER2-positive cancers. The compound is also effective against breast cancer that has spread to the brain, a common spot for breast cancer invasion. Treating tumors in the brain is especially vexing because the blood-brain barrier often blocks therapeutic drugs from reaching them.

"Treating brain metastasis is a hard, uphill climb," Lockman said. "It's one of the major hurdles in drug therapy for cancer. If this novel drug molecule is successful, this experimental therapeutic could improve the treatment of brain tumors in women with breast cancer."

Email: wholdren@

register-herald.com and follow on Twitter @WendyHoldren

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