Our findings establish a prognostic value for Arg and cortactin as predictors of metastatic dissemination and suggest that therapeutic inhibition of ABL kinases may be used for blocking breast cancer metastasis.
These findings revealed a role for ABL kinases in regulating tumor-bone interactions and provide a rationale for using ABL-specific inhibitors to limit breast cancer metastasis to bone.
Using these figures as cut-off points, elevated CK-19: ABL ratios were detected in peripheral-blood samples of 20 of 37 (54%) patients with metastatic breast cancer and in bone marrow samples of 14 of 23 (61%) patients with primary breast cancer.