By CHIOMA OBINNA

Hope for a better life is on the way of cancer patients, particularly, those from Nigeria and other West African countries as a new study has raised the prospect that some cancer patients with aggressive tumours may benefit from a class of anti-inflammatory drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

File Photo: Breast examination

Past studies have shown that some cancers such as breast cancer are more aggressive in Africans, unfortunately, experts are yet to understand why they happen.

Studying triple-negative breast cancer, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that some aggressive tumours rely on an antiviral pathway that appears to drive inflammation, widely recognised for roles in cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases.

The findings published in a recent issue of the journal Cell Reports showed that the tumours that activate this particular antiviral pathway always have dysfunctional forms of the proteins p53 and ARF, both encoded by genes known for being highly mutated in various cancers. The investigators found that the two genes compensate for each other. If both are mutated, the tumours that form are more aggressive than if only one of these genes is lost.

When both genes are lost and the antiviral pathway is activated, patients may benefit from a class of anti-inflammatory drugs called JAK inhibitors, currently prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis.

Until now, even though ARF was known to be expressed in some tumours with mutated p53, ARF largely was thought to be nonfunctional in this scenario. But the study showed that in the absence of p53, ARF actually protects against even more aggressive tumour formation.

Reacting to the report, Senior Author, Jason D. Weber, said: “It’s probably inaccurate to say that ARF completely replaces p53, which is a robust tumour suppressor with multiple ways of working.

“But it appears the cell has set up a sort of backup system with ARF. It’s not surprising that these are the two most highly mutated tumor suppressors in cancer. Because they’re backing one another up, the most aggressive tumors form when you lose both.”

Weber and his colleagues studied triple-negative breast cancer because these tumours often show mutations in both p53 and ARF. Triple-negative breast tumours are treated with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation since targeted therapies commonly used against hormone-driven breast cancers are not effective.