Cardiff University scientists are developing a novel compound that has been found to reverse the spread of malignant breast cancer cells, Medical Xpress reports.

Most cancer deaths result when the disease spreads to organs — a process known as metastasis. Up to 12,000 breast cancer patients a year develop this form of the disease, often several years after initial diagnosis of a breast lump.

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But in a recent series of studies involving mice, Cardiff researchers were able to stop the spread of cancer cells by blocking the action of a newly discovered cancer-causing gene, known as Bcl3.
 

"We showed that suppressing this gene reduced the spread of cancer by more than 80 percent," said Richard Clarkson, M.D., from Cardiff University's European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute.
 

"Our next goal was to then find a way to suppress Bcl3 pharmacologically. Despite great improvements in therapy of early stage breast cancer, the current therapeutic options for patients with late stage metastatic disease are limited. There is therefore a clear unmet clinical need to identify new drugs to reverse or at least to slow down disease progression."
 

Computer-aided studies of how the Bcl3 gene functions inside the cell allowed the researchers to identify a compound that inhibits Bcl3. When it was given to mice with metastatic cancer, the drug completely inhibited the development of the mice's metastatic tumors.
 

The team now hopes additional research will lead to the development of a new therapeutic agent capable of blocking the spread of breast cancer and perhaps other forms of the disease.
 

The study will be published in the journal Cancer Research.