Hormone receptor-positive breast cancer can spread throughout the body via the bloodstream as circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, which eventually reach remote body sites to form metastatic tumors.
The potential for these cells to form metastases rises with increased production of ribosomes, the protein-making machinery found in every living cell, according to Harvard Medical School investigators based at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.
Their work, described in a first release paper published online in Science, reveals that a subpopulation of CTCs enriched from the blood of breast cancer patients have higher levels of ribosomal proteins (RP). The presence of these proteins is associated with increased disease aggressiveness and poor clinical outcomes.
Importantly, the discovery also suggests that a combination of targeted therapies that disrupt the ribosome function and inhibit cancer cell growth slows the spread of breast cancer in a mouse model.
The study was led by Douglas Micalizzi, HMS instructor in medicine at Mass General, and co-corresponding authors Daniel Haber, the Kurt J. Isselbacher Professor of Oncology at HMS and Mass General, and Shyamala Maheswaran, HMS associate professor of surgery at Mass General.
