Seneca once wrote, “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
This is true among breast cancer patients whose faith and courage face trial every step of the way. Medical science and technology have provided some help, if not in providing a 100-percent outcome in therapy, but at least in moving toward that direction.
Two factors involved in the prognosis of breast cancer received attention in the latest issue of Breast Cancer this year. These are the Nanog and the KLF4. The report came from the study made by nine Japanese researchers, led by Takuya Nagata of the Department of Surgery and Science at the University of Toyama.
Nanog is a transcription factor critical in the self-renewal of still undifferentiated embryonic stem cells. The Nanog gene encodes this protein. Transcription is the copying process of genetic materials when the body synthesizes proteins. It plays a critical role in maintaining the capability of embryonic stem cells to develop into any type of cell or tissue except those that form the placenta or embryo. Professor Ian Chambers of the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine at The University of Edinburg (UK), who first isolated the Nanog gene from mouse, said in 2007 that it is like a “master gene” that makes embryonic stem cells grow indefinitely. (By the way, he named the gene after “Tir na nOg,” an otherworld place in Irish mythology that translates as “Land of the Young”)
Conversely, KLF4, or Kruppel-like factor 4, belongs to a group of transcription factors that regulates the proliferation, differentiation, somatic cell reprogramming and programmed destruction of cells. A study in 2013 identified it as suppressor of tumors in certain cancers, such as colorectal and breast cancers. It can measure the capacity of the embryonic stem cells to develop into any cell type.
The Nagata study, which involved 100 advanced (stage II or higher) breast cancer patients (age range between 29 and 87 years), noted that a strong manifestation of Nanog predicts a poor outcome in breast cancer patients; thus significantly lower disease-free survival than those with weak Nanog expression. Contrariwise, strong activity of KLF4 had shown better disease outcome; that is, higher disease-free survival. These findings mean that a medication that can suppress Nanog and enhance the manifestation of KLF4 may lead into a highly favorable breast cancer outcome when combined the usual cancer therapy approaches.
Here is what sounds to me like a prayer from Cassandra Clare’s City of Heavenly Fire (2014): “Temper us in fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive.”
zim_breakthroughs@yahoo.com and http://breakthroughs.today.blogspot.com