Author Interviews, Biomarkers, Breast Cancer / 29.07.2015
Elevated Neurotensin Level May Predict Breast Cancer in Women

- In experimental studies, Neurotensin and neurotensin expression was highly associated to breast cancer tissue
- Dupouy et al (2009) investigated the expression of NTS and NTSR1 in normal human breast tissue and in invasive ductal carcinomas (IDCs) and found that NTS is expressed in ductal and invasive components of IDCs. The high expression of NTSR1 is associated with the SBR grade 3 (p<0.05), larger tumor size (p<0.01), and the number of metastatic lymph nodes (p<0.05).
- It was concluded from this paper that NTS/NTSR1 is a contributor to breast cancer progression.
- Souaze et al (2006)also studied IDCs and found 34% of all tumors were positive for neurotensin and 91% positive for the NT1 receptor, suggesting the contribution of neurotensin’s involvement in the signaling cascade within breast cancer progression. In this study, it was found that disruption of neurotensin receptor signaling by silencing RNA or using a specific NT1 antagonist in nude mice xenografted with an aggressive cell line SR48692, caused the reversion of transforming functions that lead to tumor growth.
- These findings support the contribution of neurotensin to breast cancer progression.
- Wu, Z. et al (2013) reviewed the contribution of the neurotensinergic system to cancer progression, as well as the regulation and mechanisms of the system in order to highlight its potential as a therapeutic target, and its prospect for its use as a treatment in certain cancers.
- This summarizes nicely the oncogenic effects of neurotensin after stimulation signaling proliferation, survival, migration, invasion and neoangeogeneis.
- Several other papers published demonstrate the effects of neurotensin in cancers including breast cancer.
- New studies such as Roselli et al (2015) further demonstrate the role of neurotensin in aggressive breast cancer.
- At sphingotec, it was hypothesized that disease progression begins earlier than symptoms are present and that elevated expression of neurotensin in the blood would be an indicator of future breast cancer; measurement of this hormone peptide was possible with the company’s expertise, and that test could be developed to precisely measure neurotensin.
- This method is published in Ernst et al (2006) in Peptides.
- To test the hypothesis, the first clinical study was conducted in a cohort of normal healthy population that was indentified from the Malmo Diet and Cancer study, a prospective epidemiological study of 28,449 men and women. Of this group, a subset of 4632 randomly selected subjects were identified and neurotensin was measured in all subjects. Subjects were adjusted for known breast cancer risk factors such as age, age of menarche, heredity of cancer (all), hormone status, etc. (see Table 3, Melander et al JAMA 2012) so that the factors did not influence outcomes. On a 10-15 follow up period, of these subjects, 123 breast cancer events were found to be associated with higher levels of neurotensin, with the highest quartile associated with the highest levels of neurotensin and the lowest quartile associated with the lowest levels of neurotensin. The association of elevated neurotensin was found to be statistically significant for prediction of breast cancer.