Gene Associated With Cancer Drug Resistance Identified

Variations in the TEKT4 gene result in microtubule destabilization, possibly explaining how breast cancer cells develop resistance to the drug paclitaxel.

AsianScientist (May 16, 2014) – Scientists have found that variations in the TEKT4 gene are associated with resistance to the breast cancer chemotherapy drug, paclitaxel. These findings highlight a possible mechanism for resistance to paclitaxel in a subset of breast cancer patients. The study has been published in Nature Communications.

Paclitaxel is a chemotherapeutic agent used to treat breast cancer; however, this treatment is often met with drug resistance. Drs. Shao Zhi-Ming, Yu Ke-Da and colleagues from the Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center sequenced breast cancer tissue from patients both before and after paclitaxel treatment and found that some samples had increased levels of TEKT4 gene variation after treatment. The authors noted that these patients had reduced overall disease free survival compared to patients without the variants.

The protein product of TEKT4 is known to stabilize microtubules — filaments in cells that are important for cell division. In cultured cells in the laboratory, the expression of the variant TEKT4 gene resulted in enhanced resistance to paclitaxel and destabilized microtubules. These findings provide a possible mechanism for how a subset of breast cancer patients may develop resistance to paclitaxel.

The article can be found at: Jiang et al. (2014) Enriched Variations in TEKT4 and Breast Cancer Resistance to Paclitaxel.

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Source: Nature Publishing Group.

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