Clinical potential of the mTOR effectors S6K1, S6K2 and 4EBP1 in breast cancer

Abstract: The prognosis of patients diagnosed with breast cancer has been considerably improved in the latest 25 years, as a result of continuous development of diagnostics and treatment regimens. Though, tumour diseases, for woman mainly lung cancer and breast cancer, still constitute of the most common causes of death in developed countries, following heart diseases. A future utopia is to develop more individualised therapy strategies, to further increase breast cancer survival, but also to decrease  the risk of severe side-effects of unnecessary treatments.Normal mammary gland development is regulated by a complex interplay between growth factors and hormones, mainly oestrogen and progesterone, in different cell types. Breast cancer origin and progression is assumed to result from an imbalance in this interplay, leading to the so called “Hallmarks of cancer”, including unlimited cellular proliferation. A central hub in the regulation of proliferation is the intracellular mTOR signalling pathway. Antioestrogen therapy is widely used in breast cancer clinics, however resistance towards this treatment is a remaining problem, and overactivation of mTOR may be one reason behind. A new treatment regimen constituting a combination of mTOR inhibitors with endocrine therapy was recently clinically approved for advanced breast cancers. Although significant benefit for this combination treatment is evident for some patients, counteracting feedback mechanisms are assumed to diminish the effects.The work presented in this thesis focuses on the genes S6K1, S6K2 and 4EBP1 which are main effectors of the intracellular mTOR signalling pathway and thereby secondary targets of the mTOR inhibitors. Our results suggests that the gene amplification status, expression levels of the corresponding mRNA and protein of S6K1, S6K2 and 4EBP1 as well as their cellular localisation may be used to predict breast cancer outcome and the benefit from antioestrogen treatments. These factors are indicated to play separate roles in different subtypes of breast cancer, and specific targeting of S6K1 and S6K2 may be valuable in different tumour subtypes, and in comparison to present day’s mTOR inhibitors, further promote individualised therapies, and thereby increase breast cancer survival.