(ANSA) - Rome, January 2 - Italian
researchers have found a new way of catching breast cancer early.
Pier Paolo Di Fiore of Milan's IFOM cancer lab believes a protein called
NUMB can help doctors gauge the seriousness of breast cancer right away.
"NUMB provides us with a new biomarker which can be used as a diagnostic
indicator for breast cancer," Di Fiore told the Nature journal.
"All you have to do is measure the quantity of NUMB in tissue taken from
the patient".
NUMB has already been found in other forms of cancer which generally have
more favorable outcomes than breast cancer.
Di Fiore and his team think they have pinned down how it acts in breast
cancer with an anti-cancer guardian called p53.
They are now looking at ways to boost this mechanism with drugs.
A shortage of NUMB, in fact, hampers the action of p53, resulting in
unfavorable prognoses and even resistance to chemotherapy.
"NUMB is involved in a new molecular circuit that can be pharmacologically
modulated to bring conditions back to normal," Di Fiore says in the Nature
article.
