Scientists find gene that makes cancer spread

All they have to do now is find a drug to get rid of the metastasis. Makes it sound easy. Would be a massive breakthrough.

clipped from www.abc.net.au A single gene appears to play a crucial role in deadly breast cancers, increasing the chances the cancer will spread and making it resistant to chemotherapy, US researchers said. They found people with aggressive breast cancers have abnormal genetic alterations in a gene called MTDH, and drugs that block the gene could keep local tumours from metastasising or spreading, increasing a woman's chances for survival. "Not only has a new metastasis gene been identified, but this also is one of a few such genes for which the exact mode of action has been elucidated," Dr Michael Reiss, of The Cancer Institute of New Jersey in New Brunswick, said. "That gives us a real shot at developing a drug that will inhibit metastasis." Stopping cancer's spread is important - while more than 98 per cent of patients with breast cancer that has not spread live five years or more, only 27 per cent of patients whose cancer has spread to other organs survive.