'la Caixa' Foundation Backs Efforts to Validate New Therapeutic Targets for Breast Cancer

Despite great advances in its detection and treatment, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer and one of the most common cause of cancer-related death in women. In the United States alone, one woman dies of breast cancer every 13 minutes.

Current treatments include surgery and radiotherapy, which often have toxic side effects and can lead to resistance, highlighting the urgent need to develop new treatments. Before they can test new drugs, researchers have to study fundamental aspects of the disease to understand how cancer starts, grows and spreads. These efforts can reveal new mechanisms to exploit for therapeutic purposes.

ICREA Research Professor Isabelle Vernos at the Centre for Genomic Regulation, co-coordinator of the Quantitative Cell Biology research programme, studies the biology and function of microtubules, molecular-sized tubes which provide structure and shape to cells. Microtubules also attach to chromosomes and play a critical role in cell division.

When cell division goes wrong, it can lead to the creation of new cells with an abnormal number of chromosomes. The frequency at which chromosome segregation errors occur is known as chromosomal instability. While moderate levels of chromosomal instability can aid cancer growth, higher levels can induce a cancer cell’s death.

In a study published last year in the journal Nature Communications, Dr. Vernos discovered that the enzyme TTLL11 protects cells from making errors during cell division by ensuring that chromosomes are properly segregated. Surprisingly, the enzyme’s activity was found to be compromised in human cancer cells, though its activity remained intact.

This paradoxical observation led Dr. Vernos and her team to theorise that completely inhibiting TTLL11, either alone or alongside other types of drugs, could offer a more precise and potent approach to targeting breast cancer cells.

That idea has now been backed by the “la Caixa” Foundation, who today announce that Dr. Vernos is to receive €50,000 to validate TTLL11 as a therapeutic target. If successful, the research might not only introduce new drugs into the treatment landscape but also magnify the efficacy of existing chemotherapies.

The project has been backed during the 2023 call for the new CaixaImpulse Innovation program. This year, it has awarded 3.3 million euros to 29 biomedical research projects with the aim of contributing to transferring research results to society and the market, and promoting the creation of new products, services and companies related to life sciences and health.