Breast cancer gene to be investigated

A project to develop scientific tools for detecting and studying a gene that could play a role in the development of breast cancer tumours has been awarded £20,000 from Cancer Research UK.

A team in the Department of Surgery and Molecular Oncology, led by Dr Jean-Christophe Bourdon and Professor Alastair Thompson, plan to develop a fast and simple detection kit for identifying the expression of a gene, known as the Scotin gene, in breast tumours.

The team have already discovered that Scotin gene expression is altered in about 85 per cent of breast tumours and can be expressed in about 12 different ways. That is, the protein that the gene encodes for can take a slightly different 'shape' each time, and 12 different forms were identified in total.

Two of these proteins, known as Scotin-5 and Scotin-9, were specifically expressed in the breast tumours that Dr Bourdon and his colleagues examined and early results suggest that Scotin-5 might play a role in carcinogenesis.

"This new funding will help us to verify this hypothesis," Dr Bourdon said. "We need to develop scientific tools that can detect and study the biological activities of Scotin-5 and Scotin-9."

Part of this research will also involve creating antibodies for the two Scotin variants. This will help the researchers to further examine the biological activities of Scotin-5 and Scotin-9 and their expression in normal and tumour tissue.

In Scotin, Dr Bourdon has the international lead in pursuing the complex biology of breast cancers. With this funding the team will undertake further laboratory work to advance our understanding of breast cancer which may ultimately lead to improvements in patient care.