Researchers at UNMC are making strides in dealing with Her2.
Dr. Kay Wagner says Her2 is an aggressive type of breast cancer. He says there are several subsets and that each case must be treated differently.
Dr. Wagner says in previous studies, it was thought that by inhibiting a certain protein called Cyclin D1, the growth of breast cancer cells could be stopped or slowed. But he says his research indicated the opposite was true.
"Essentially our studies invalidate all these kind of approaches that have been suggested to target this Cyclin D1 protein as a form of breast cancer treatment. What our studies show is that another protein takes over the function. When Cyclin D1 is absent, the Cyclin D3 protein takes over the function so we can only successfully treat these forms of breast cancers if we inactivate both of these proteins.”
Dr. Wagner says the next step would be to test drugs that can do that. Dr. Wagner’s findings were published in the December issue of Cancer Research.