Tremendous breast cancer breakthrough

It could become one of the biggest medical discoveries in the fight against breast cancer, and it happened in Buffalo.

The pace of progress in treating and preventing breast cancer is about to speed up, thanks to a basic science discovery at the Hauptman-Woodward Institute.

Doctor Debashis Ghosh (Hauptman-Woodward Institute) said, "Breast cancer, as we know, is mainly 70, 80 percent, are estrogen-driven. So the question comes, how to control the estrogen?"

Drugs like tamoxifen interfere with estrogen action, but Dr. Ghosh, and his colleagues at Hauptman-Woodward and Roswell Park were after a better way, preventing the cells from making estrogen.

A chemical called aromatase is required to make estrogen, and they want to make a drug to block it, but up to now, no one knew the actual structure of aromatase.

"It's like trying to make a key for a lock, but not knowing what the inner crivices of the lock are."

"But if we knew the shape of the lock, we could make a key that would fit only that lock."
and they found it.

A diagram shows the structure of human aromatase, and the pink area is where the estrogen molecule is created.

"So we have actually found the answer to that puzzle."

Scientists had been searching for that answer for decades. Now they can design a new drug to specifically inhibit aromatase, without unwanted side effects.

"Now that we have the structure, I am almost certain that we can do better in a shorter period of time."

The discovery of that structure is a tremendous breakthrough, now they can design and build chemicals that fit that structure exactly and completely block the production of estrogens by aromatase. and that will be all they'll do, no side effects.

Q. How long will it be until those drugs are ready?

A. They've already designed some chemicals that might be ideal inhibitors of aromatase. The next step is to have chemists create the drugs, then test them in the lab, and then begin clinical trials. That will take a few years, but it's going to happen.