Obesity reprograms immune cells in breasts to promote tumor formation

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-05/uocm-ori050619.php

News Release 6-May-2019
Macrophages in fatty breast tissue promote triple-negative breast cancers
University of Chicago Medical Center

Smoking has long been the biggest cause of cancer in the United States, but obesity, now the second leading cause, has been gaining ground. A new study from researchers at the University of Chicago finds that women with breast cancer, the most common cancer among women, are at even higher risk from obesity.

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Obesity has become "a global epidemic," Becker said. The prevalence in the United States is about 36 percent for ages 20 to 39, 43 percent for ages 40 to 59, and 41 percent for those 60 and older. The United States is ranked 12th worldwide for obesity.

"Current treatment of breast cancer patients ignores the ongoing obesity epidemic," said study co-author Marsha Rosner, PhD, the Charles B. Huggins Professor in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research. "In order to take this into consideration, we need to help patients lose weight or identify new drug targets that would be effective in obese cancer patients."

Unfortunately, once the cancer has been detected there may not be time to lose weight prior to treatment. "So our bottom line," Rosner said, is to "promote weight loss as a cancer prevention measure, incorporate weight loss as a component of therapy for patients with breast cancer, and develop specific drug targets that could be leveraged to address the obesity component of the disease."

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