Serendipity In Science

BigBreakthrough
BreastCancerVille


A significant proportion of breast cancers that are carried in families arise because of a mutation in a hunk of DNA known as the Breast Cancer gene #1, or BRCA-1 for short.

This is the gene that women get tested for if there is a concern about the possibility of hereditary breast cancer arising because two or more close relatives have had the disease.

Now, just to get technical for a moment, the mutations almost always muck up the DNA just enough to keep the gene from producing its normally functioning protein in cells.

Which has been the crux of the problem in treatment terms.

Because it is always much easier to develop a drug that disrupts something than it is to develop a drug that fixes a complicated thing that is lost.

Thus, nobody has been able to figure out how to fix the damage caused by the mutational loss of BRCA-1.

Until today.

It turns out that one way to do it is to use a drug that blocks progesterone action, which normally makes breast cells grow, especially when they don't have any BRCA-1 protein.

The data are quite striking, and they were published today in the rigorously peer-reviewed (ie. evidence-based) journal Science (warning: gobbledy-gook alert - however, a decently readable summary can also be found in the WaPo)

So where does the serendipity come in?

Well, it turns out that the drug that does the best job of blocking progesterone action is also known as RU-486.

What is RU-486?

Well, it is also known as mifepristone, a compound that can be used as a very early abortifacient because it blocks implantation and disrupts very in the first portion of the first trimester (ie. for the first 6-7 weeks of gestation).

Which just goes to show........The Goddess works in strange ways sometimes.

Don't you think?

_______
Cliff posted up the WaPo link. And, just for the record, a note of caution - so far this has only been done in mice and cells in a culture dish, not people, but the data are very solid. Trust me on this one - for a change I actually really and truly know what I'm talking about here.
Thanks to Johnny B. who corrected my sloppy verbiage in the original version of this post with respect to the how RU-486 is used in the real world (as opposed to how it works biologically) - a more complete explanation of this is available in the comments.

.