About five years ago, two Tel Aviv University researchers met to discuss what happens when breast cancer spreads to the brain and forms lethal tumors.

The results of that meeting inspired 43 researchers in 14 laboratories across six countries to team up on a groundbreaking study in which they discovered a key mechanism that enables breast cancer to turn deadly by spreading to the brain and destroying healthy brain cells.

The scientists’ peer-reviewed findings, recently published in the scientific journal Nature Genetics, could help in the development of new drugs and aid in the early detection and treatment of breast cancer that metastasizes to the brain.

The research was led by Prof. Uri Ben-David and Prof. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro at Tel Aviv’s Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences and their researchers, Dr. Kathrin Laue and Dr. Sabina Pozzi, and scientists from the United States, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Australia.

“This study is novel and potentially revolutionizing,” Prof. Stefano Santaguida, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Milan and group leader at the European Institute of Oncology, told The Times of Israel. Santaguida was not involved in the study.

The scientists analyzed data from tumors of breast cancer patients, experiments in cultured cancer cells, 3D cancer models, and functional experiments in mice.

In a video call with The Times of Israel, Satchi-Fainaro and Ben-David spoke about their collaboration and how it evolved.

First, Ben-David said it is still unclear why patients with breast cancer end up with tumor cells in specific organs, such as the brain, liver, lungs, or bones.

“This is a very important and open question,” Ben-David said. “Most cancer-related deaths are not caused by the primary tumor but by its metastases to vital organs. Among these, brain metastases are some of the deadliest and most difficult to treat.”

“My lab works on tumor-host interactions, meaning how cancer cells, once they reach the brain, interact and then exploit brain cells for their own use,” Satchi-Fainaro said.

Ben-David said that his lab studies the phenomenon of aneuploidy, considered a hallmark of cancer, when there are “massive changes in the........

© The Times of Israel