Dr. Weeks’ Comment: Triple-negative breast cancers are considered difficult to treat because the common targets for chemotherapy (estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors and Her2 are not present so the oncologists don’t know what to target. Well this timely article from Germany clarifies three things which readers of this blog and the Centisble Health Newsletter have known for years 1) cancer STEM cells are the really important target and not the cancer TUMOR cells which oncologists typically target; 2) anti-inflammatory agents are the solution for cancer in general and triple-negative cancer in particular; 3) the scientific methodology, when boosted by funding, finds answers so never give up!
Background: What is methylation and what is demethylation? Methylation is adding a methyl group (a carbon and 3 hydrogens =CH3) and demethylation is removing the same. So a demethylase is an enzyme that helps take a CH3 away and this new class of cancer drugs removes a CH3 from a histone -the regenerative proteins found in the nuclei of our cells that package and arrange DNA into functional units called nucleosomes which make up the chromatin which protects the new DNA being produced in the cell and makes this a well regulated process. What you need to know is that INFLAMMATION disrupts this process and anti-inflammatory foods like black cumin seed, black raspberry seed and resveratrol in Chardonnay grape seed as well as cholesterol sulfate and vitamin D3 and herbs like curcumin. Bottom line, this new and I promise you very expensive patented drug (FOR ANALYSIS Of THE PATENT CLICK HERE ) inhibits the removal of a methyl group. What does that in a safe and effective and cost effective manner? Anti-inflammatory foods and seeds in particular. Seeds of Eden
Abstract
Traditional treatments for breast cancer fail to address therapy-resistant cancer stem-like cells that have been characterized by changes in epigenetic regulators such as the lysine demethylase KDM4.
Here we describe an orally available, selective and potent KDM4 inhibitor (QC6352) with unique preclinical characteristics.
To assess the anti-tumor properties of QC6352, we established a method to isolate and propagate breast cancer stem-like cells (BCSC) from individual triple-negative tumors resected from patients after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Limiting-dilution orthotopic xenografts of these BCSC regenerated original patient tumor histology and gene expression.
QC6352 blocked BCSC proliferation, sphere formation and xenograft tumor formation. QC6352 also abrogated expression of EGFR which drives the growth of therapy-resistant triple-negative breast cancer cells.
Our findings validate a unique BCSC culture system for drug screening and offer preclinical proof of concept for KDM4 inhibition as a new strategy to treat triple-negative breast cancer.