Researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) may have found a new option for targeted breast cancer therapy by showing the link between a certain protein and the formation and development of blood vessels that feed breast tumors. Like mortar between bricks in a wall, T-cadherin is a protein that helps cells stick together and collectively form tissues. Cancer cells that loosen their adhesive tissue bonds stop producing T-cadherin, and in tumors, only the blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients express this protein. Now, Barbara Ranscht, Ph.D., and Robert Oshima, Ph.D., at Burnham have led a team that developed the first living model to study this protein’s effect on tumor angiogenesis by creating a strain of mice that develops spontaneous mammary gland tumors in the absence of T-cadherin. Their results appeared March 1 in Cancer Research.
