In the continuing investigations into the causes and treatments of breast cancer in women researchers at the National Cancer Institute believe that they have managed to identify a specific gene that may play a role in the metastasis of breast cancer to the brain.

One of the studies author’s Diane Palmieri, Ph.D said that Hexokinase 2 overexpression was found to be more highly expressed in patients with brain metastasis who had breast cancer than in primary breast tumors.

The authors of the study feel that their findings represent a great step forward in the development of future breast cancer treatments. “Improvements in breast cancer therapy have made prognoses like brain metastasis a growing problem, and this research points to a potential target for future therapies, “said co author Brunhilde Felding-Habermann PhD.

Their study differed from many others in that it used human rather than animal tissues. Using animal tissues can cause a number of different problems and it harder to ensure that results are accurate.

During the course of their study the women examined both brain metastases and primary breast cancer tumors, which was how they discovered the elevated rates of Hexokinase 2 that were present in the brain metastases versus the breast tumors. Amongst the resected metastasized brain tissues the ones demonstrating the highest levels Hexokinase 2 were associated with the lowest levels of survival with the life expectancy for those patients being an average 9.6 months while a rate of 17.5 months was the average survival rate for those afflicted patients with lower levels of Hexokinase 2.

Although the rate of overall survival for breast cancer patients is increasing every year, once the disease has spread to the brain the chances of any significant amount of hope for eventual survival are greatly decreased. This usually occurs in the later stages of the disease.

In order for their findings to help lead to new treatments Palmieri says that therapies need to be developed to effectively “turn off” the gene and starve the tumor to prevent further growth.

The study was published in Molecular Cancer Research, one of the journals of the American Association for Cancer Research  and was funded by the National Cancer Institute for whom Diana Palmieri works. Her partner Ms. Felding-Habermann is an associate professor at the Scripps Research Institute.