Jolie gene drug may help other sufferers
DRUGS used to treat breast cancer patients with the inherited “Angelina Jolie gene” could also help one in five other sufferers.
The actress underwent a double mastectomy after finding she carried the BRCA1 gene mutation that causes the condition.
Now British scientists have found people without the gene or its cousin BRCA2 can still have genetically similar forms of breast cancer.
This means that drugs currently given to those who carry the gene mutation could also help them, possibly helping 11,000 people in the UK.
Those carrying the faulty BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are currently treated with PARP inhibitors, drugs designed to deal with the bad genes which prevent the fixing of faulty DNA.
Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire, discovered that a greater number of breast cancers are genetically similar to BRCA types. The research, published in Nature Medicine, analysed the breast cancer genomes of 560 patients and looked for every single type of mutation possible.
They found mutational signatures in some tumours, which were similar to people who have mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes but were not inherited.
The results suggest that roughly one in five breast cancer patients could benefit from existing PARP inhibitor treatment, described as a DNA repair mechanism.