Tissue Analysis May Help Predict Breast Cancer Outcome

An analysis of breast tissue may help doctors better predict outcomes for women with breast cancer, a new study reports. Researchers analyzed what they describe as "highways" of connective tissue in breast cancer tumors, and found that the way collagen fibers the main component of connective tissue are arranged may aid in a patient's diagnosis and help determine treatment. Collagen not only surrounds most body organs and helps provide structure for the body, it also tells cells how to behave, the study authors noted. Normally, a close-up of collagen resembles a jumbled path or a plate of cooked spaghetti.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed tumor cells from 200 patients with invasive breast cancer. The investigators found signs that the collagen began to act differently as the tumors progressed. "We think the cancer cells start to pull on the collagen and straighten it out, forming a track or highway on which the cells can migrate," study senior author Patricia Keely, an associate professor of cell and regenerative biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said in a university news release. As the highways became more developed, the prognoses for patients worsened, the study found.

"We have identified a novel collagen-signature system that may become a very useful addition to the tools clinicians use to determine a breast cancer patient's prognosis," Keely explained. The research is published in the March issue of the American Journal of Pathology. Commenting on the study, Dr. Priscilla A. Furth, a professor of oncology and medicine at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, described it as an example of "valid basic research." However, "before any new prognostic test can go into practice it must be extensively validated. This publication is a first step that might trigger additional research to examine the utility of this type of analysis in different settings and by different groups," said Furth, who was not involved with the study.

Gene Therapy Against HIV Not a Proven Cure

Experts are reacting with cautious optimism to the announcement Monday that researchers reconfigured immune cells so that they became resistant to HIV in six patients infected with the virus. But they say the jury is out on whether the technique might ever spell an end to AIDS. The goal is ultimately a cure or what's called a "functional cure" having the body permanently keep HIV at bay but "we're not there yet," stressed Dr. Michael Kolber, professor of medicine and director of the Comprehensive AIDS Program at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

The trial, reported Feb. 28 at a meeting of HIV specialists in Boston, "was a proof-of-principle that they could go in and do this. They demonstrated that the cells stayed in the patients, but the patients were not cured," said Kolber, who was not involved in the new research. Another expert agreed that the treatment's true potential remains uncertain. "If successful, this probably could have wide application, but going from six patients to an entire epidemic is a ways to go," said Dr. Michael Horberg, director of HIV/AIDS at Kaiser Permanente Health Plan and vice chair of the HIV Medicine Association.

"With other successes we've already had, that makes it more promising and people are starting to have a greater vision as to what's possible." However, as Kolber pointed out, this trial was what's known as a phase I trial, which means it was primarily looking at safety, not effectiveness, although investigators do often report on initial effectiveness results at this stage. The idea came from an isolated case that first made headlines in 2009, involving the so-called "Berlin patient." This man, an American AIDS patient living in Germany, was apparently cured after receiving blood cells from a donor who happened to have a rare, natural immunity to HIV.