Washington, Oct 2 : Researchers from the University of Manchester have revealed new methods of controlling and treating breast cancer.

One third of women diagnosed with breast cancer experienced that the disease recurred some years later after being successfully treated because some of these cancer cells survive the treatment and begin to grow again.

Therefore, Dr Robert Clarke and his team at the University's Cancer Studies research group investigated human breast cancers for the presence of stem cells, which generate new tumours and can cause the cancer to recur.

The findings revealed that breast cancer stem cells are stimulated by the Notch gene. Therefore the research team is now hoping to develop new drug therapies to target this gene and thus stop the growth of any surviving breast cancer stem cells.

One drug, Herceptin, that is known to attack Notch is already used for the treatment of Alzheimer's Disease. According to the team, having undergone health and safety checks, its clinical trial for use on breast cancer patients could be speeded up and lead to a treatment in hospital clinics within a few years.

The research team is also aiming to identify other methods of controlling breast cancer stem cells by using a genetic library to shut down other genes at random to see how it affects them, in a study with Rene Bernards at the Netherlands Cancer Institute.

The researchers along with Professor Tony Whetton, are using a state-of-the-art mass-spectrometry based proteomics facility at the Paterson Institute of Cancer Research to identify proteins that control breast cancer stem cells. The facility - one of only a few in the UK - enables them to break up breast cancer stem cell proteins and analyse the sequence of amino acids to identify novel proteins that control the cells' growth.

"Our work has revealed the importance of several pathways not previously known to regulate stem cell survival and self-renewal, which is tremendously exciting. Inhibitors of signalling pathways that regulate cancer stem cells could represent a new therapeutic modality in breast cancer, to be used in combination with current treatments in the near future," Dr Clarke said.

The findings of the research were announced at the National Cancer Research Institute conference in Birmingham on 1 October, 2007. The study, which was published in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, was funded by the charity Breast Cancer Campaign. (With inputs from ANI)