Date of publication: February 19, 2013
According to a study published in the British Journal of Cancer, higher tumor levels of a protein known as MET may be linked with worse outcomes among women with triple-negative breast cancer. Drugs that target MET are currently being investigated for the treatment of several types of cancer, including triple-negative breast cancer.
The MET protein is part of a biological pathway that functions abnormally in many types of cancer. To explore whether tumor levels of MET affect the prognosis of triple-negative breast cancer, researchers in Vienna evaluated samples of tumor tissue from 170 women.
Just over half of the tumors (52%) had high levels of MET. After accounting for other factors that affect prognosis, high levels of MET were linked with a more than three-fold increase in risk of cancer recurrence.
These results suggest that MET-targeted therapies may provide a benefit in triple-negative breast cancer. Clinical trials to evaluate promising drugs are currently underway.