Japanese find gene that may curb breast cancer

Japanese researchers have identified a gene which may prevent breast cancer, a discovery that could one day lead to tablets or injections to ward off the disease.

However, the director of Britain's leading cancer charity, Professor Gordon McVie, warned yesterday that while the early results were encouraging, the preliminary work done on Japanese women must be replicated in Europe and the United States, and on different racial groups, to prove its worth.

The Japanese work discovered significant mutations in a gene, called RB1CC1, in seven out of 35 women who had breast cancer. The affected women had flaws in that gene which either stopped it functioning or reduced its efficiency significantly.

That in turn means that it could not produce the hormone to control another gene, called RB1, which has been implicated in 80 per cent of human cancers, including breast cancer.

But Professor McVie, director of Cancer Research UK, advocated a degree of caution in interpreting the results. He said that the experiments "need to be done in Europe and the US, and on different ethnic groups, because they will all react differently.

"Japanese women have a lower incidence of breast cancer than in the West, so these findings may not carry over directly," he said.

If the hormone produced by RB1CC1 can be isolated, then it might be able to synthesise it and turn it into something which could be taken orally or by injection – just as insulin is taken to break down sugar from the bloodstream when the pancreas does not function correctly.

Breast cancer affects more than 38,000 women in the UK every year. Many other gene candidates have also been identified for study, including p53, which is known to be important in triggering the death of potentially cancerous cells. Professor McVie noted that a number of teams are working on future therapies involving p53 and RB1: "This is step one in a 20-step programme," he added.

In Britain, one in nine women will develop breast cancer during their lives – usually after the age of 50. Another 7,000 aged under 50 are diagnosed each year. Men are not immune: 200 British males are diagnosed with it every year.