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News in Brief

A newly discovered ‘breast stem cell’ could play a major role in breast cancer, reveals an Australian study at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia. The team, led by Mark Shackleton and François Vaillant, found large amounts of these stem cells in precancerous tissue. Their discovery could lead to new cancer therapies targeted at errant forms of the cell. Previous studies had shown that a single progenitor cell could be responsible for repopulating an entire mammary gland, inspiring the team to investigate. The group managed to create a fully formed breast in a female mouse by implanting the stem cell into a mammary fat pad where the breast tissue had been previously removed. The breast that formed was so accurate, that it was even able to lactate normally. Although the stem cells are normally programmed to produce normal breast tissue, it is thought that genetic abnormalities can cause these cells to produce faulty daughter cells, hence creating a ‘tumor factory’ in the breast. Interestingly, these cells seem to evade current chemotherapy methods. Chemotherapy targets cells that divide at a certain rate, thereby killing rapidly dividing cancer cells. These new stem cells, however, divide at an altogether slower rate than ‘normal cancer cells’, which may begin to explain why breast cancer often recurs in women where it has seemingly been eradicated by chemotherapy. The new stem cell may be important not only for targeting cancerous cells in sufferers but also in reconstructive therapy for breast cancer patients. Further research, using excised human breast tissue, is now underway to test if the theory can be put to use in humans.