(Ivanhoe Newswire) – Reduce your blood pressure – cut your risk for
breast cancer? New research shows a common blood pressure drug can block a
breast cancer gene.
Losartan is prescribed to treat patients with high blood pressure. But in a
recent study on mice, researchers found it blocked the gene AGTR1, a gene seen
in 10 to 20 percent of breast cancers that causes normal breast cells to behave
like cancer cells. After eight weeks of treatment with losartan, tumors that
expressed AGTR1 shrunk by 30 percent.
"We suspect our analysis has uncovered a new crop of potentially important
breast cancer genes," Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Michigan
Center for Translational Pathology, was quoted as saying. "What's also exciting
is this gene is blocked by a drug that's already available on the market."
SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2009
