Iron Deprivation Treatment of Breast Cancer: Preclinical Studies.

摘要

Progress has been made at the pre-clinical level in the study of iron deprivation as a potential treatment modality for metastatic breast cancer. The MDA-MB-231 cell line is sensitive to combined iron deprivation treatment in vitro but does not appear to be sensitive in vivo. The SK-BR-3 cell is also sensitive in vitro but could not be evaluated in vivo. The contrasting fact that iron deprivation induces apoptosis in the 38C13 lymphoma (and inhibits growth in vitro and in vivo) is now being pursued with the hypothesis that a response to iron deprivation requires an intact p53 gene. The exon/intron structure of the human transferrin gene has been determined and this will facilitate experiments to knock out the gene in cell lines and thus allow the determination of whether it is necessary for tumor growth in vivo. These genetic studies have incidentally created new opportunities to study the possible functional roles of polymorphisms in the transferrin receptor gene and the evolutionary relationship between the transferrin receptor gene and other genes.