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Researchers have come up with a breakthrough discovery that prevents breast cancer from recurring after the successful completion of the treatment. The investigators uncovered how the disease hides itself in the body while being treated.

It was observed in the study that even during the early stages of breast cancer the cancer cells move into the bone marrow, remain dormant and safe from chemotherapy. The cells that lies dormant in the bone marrow relapse later on in life leading to recurrence of the disease.

The researchers identified the molecule that helps the invasion of cancer cells into the bone marrow in mice thereby helping them escape chemotherapy and other hormonal therapies. According to the study, if the breast cancer cells in the bone marrow are flushed into the blood stream they can be killed by the drugs administered during the therapy, according to Medical News Today.

"Cells from breast cancers that are hormone receptor-positive roam through the blood and tissues of mice.These cells are on the lookout for specific blood vessels in bone marrow that contain the molecule E-selectin. With their molecular key, molecules on their surface that bind to E-selectin, the cancer cells enter the spongy tissue inside bones, often lying dormant for years," noted Mirror.

When biopsies are made from tissues of human bone marrow in patients affected with breast cancer it was revealed that the cancer cells enter the bone marrows at very early stages of the disease. The researchers proposed two strategies to stop the travel of the cancer cells; one is inhibiting the E-selectin to control the movement of the cancer cells and other by using an agent to flush the cells from the bone marrow to the bloodstream.

The researchers administered Plerixafor, the agent used in humans for flushing stem cells from bone marrow into bloodstream in mice. Eventually Plerixafor helped pushing the dormant cells into the blood stream indicating a possibility of new breast cancer treatment.

"We are hopeful that by understanding how these breast cancer cells migrate through the body and what their life cycle is, we can discover ways to make them more vulnerable and treatable," said Associate Professor Dr Dorothy Sipkins at Duke University Medical Centre, reported Mirror. "Our hope is to move forward with additional studies in mice to better understand our approach before moving on to studies in humans."