News archive

Cells exposed to cancer-driving mutations respond by triggering a stress reaction called cellular senescence, which halts cell proliferation and thereby constitutes the major protective barrier to cancer. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now discovered a previously unknown signaling pathway that controls cellular senescence in breast cancer.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have investigated the long-term effect of hormonal therapy in women with the most common types of hormone-sensitive breast cancer. The results, presented in the journal JAMA Oncology, show that the treatment has a protective effect against distant metastatic cancer for both so-called Luminal A and Luminal B breast cancer subtypes, and a long-term effect for women diagnosed with Luminal A cancer.

Carina Strell and colleagues in the Arne Östman research group has published an article in Journal of the National Cancer Institute investigating mechanisms controlling fibroblast functions in ductal breast carcinoma in situ (DCIS).

In the present study Elin Sjöberg and colleagues in the Arne Östman research group have identified that cancer associated fibroblast (CAF)-produced CXCL14 re-activates a developmental program that promote migration and invasion of cancer cells, leading to increased formation of lung metastasis in mice. They also identified a novel CXCL14-signaling component, ACKR2, which is important for the tumor-promoting effects of CXCL14.

In a new study, led by Professor Janne Lehtiö (SciLifeLab/Karolinska Institutet), researchers from SciLifeLab, University of Oslo, and MD Anderson Cancer Center have generated a detailed map of protein levels in breast tumors. The proteome complements the previously known DNA and RNA picture of breast cancer and sheds light on how different mutations give rise to changes on the protein level.

Nick Tobin, Arian Lundberg and colleagues have shown the broad clinical utility of the Recurrence Score and PAM50 breast cancer gene signatures in two papers published simultaneously in Clinical Cancer Research.

Researchers at OnkPat have found that breast cancer stem cells are dependent on a certain estrogen receptor to survive. The findings, which are presented in Journal of the National Cancer Institute opens up for new treatment strategies for breast cancer.

Among women with high-risk early breast cancer, the use of tailored dose-dense chemotherapy compared with standard adjuvant chemotherapy did not result in a statistically significant improvement in breast cancer recurrence-free survival, and nonhematologic toxic effects were more frequent in the tailored dose-dense group, according to a study appearing in the November 8 issue of JAMA.

Charlotte Rolny and colleagues at the Department of Oncology-Pathology have discovered a new mechanism that could be the key to a new strategy to restrict breast cancer growth.

Low-educated and immigrant women run a lower risk of breast cancer occurrence than highly educated women and women born in Sweden. However, the risk of dying from breast cancer is higher for those low-educated and immigrant women that do get the diagnose – a development that has occurred in Sweden during the last ten years. This according to a new study from the Karolinska Institutet based on the records of some 5 million women between 1961 and 2007.