(Image courtesy of Pravda)
Are we witnessing a new breakthrough for breast cancer? That's what Francois Vaillant and colleagues are claiming. These Australian researchers say that they have discovered the stem cells responsible for growth of the mammary gland. They were able to grow new breasts in mice and claim that this could lay foundation for all new treatment options for breast cancer.
Scientists were successful in growing skin tissue from single stem cells in the past. This is the first time a complex organ like the mammary gland was grown from a one single stem cell. This study is published in the recent issue of the journal Nature.
Other researchers say that this study that comes from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne is a breakthrough in understanding how normal breast tissue develops and could revolutionize the way how we treat breast cancer and other cancers.
What does it mean to you and me? Knowing the pathways of normal growth of the stem cells into the mammary gland could lead to development of new medications to treat breast cancer. Also it may be possible in future to develop a technique to grow new breast in women who had mastectomy. Researchers say that it may take next 10 or 20 years before we may develop new medications to treat breast cancer based on this new discovery.
It's a puzzle among scientific community, why women who had all the breast cancer cells eliminated by using chemotherapy could experience a recurrence of breast cancer. If all the factors controlling the growth of the stem cells go in a regulated fashion the stem cell would grow in to a normal breast tissue, but a combination of genetic errors and other external influences could cause it to generate faulty cells. |
