The study, published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, found that maintaining low levels of the CPT1C protein is an indicator of poor prognosis in breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy treatment with anthracyclines, specifically with doxorubicin.

As lead researchers in the study, Dr Núria Casals and Dr Rut Fadó, explain, anthracycline chemotherapy is the only systematic therapy with proven efficacy in treating triple-negative breast cancer, and it has shown a very positive impact on patient survival, despite the fact that some patients develop resistance.

Researchers from the Neurolipids Research Group decided to begin investigating to determine whether CPT1C expression could be involved in drug sensitivity loss in breast cancer, taking into account that chemoresistance has been associated with changes in the degree of plasma membrane saturation and that previous studies had reported that CPT1C could regulate lipid content of tumour cells. The study results show that CPT1C protein remodels the plasma membrane lipids of breast tumour cells and increases the degree of lipid saturation and the chain length, allowing the membrane to become impermeable to drugs and causing chemoresistance.

After analysing the main results, the researchers have proposed that this protein be considered a new predictive biomarker of survival in anthracycline treatment in patients with triple-negative breast cancer. In addition, understanding better how the role of the lipid membrane of cancer cells works in chemotherapy may contribute to improving the long-term efficacy of treatments in human tumours and to developing new drugs.

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