A new study from Weill Cornell Medicine reveals that the enzyme EZH2 drives chromosomal instability in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), promoting metastasis. Researchers found that overproduction of EZH2 silences the gene tankyrase 1, causing accumulation of CPAP and abnormal chromosome segregation during cell division. This faulty process enables cancer cells to spread aggressively to distant organs.
Published in Cancer Discovery, the study showed that inhibiting EZH2 with drugs like the FDA-approved tazemetostat restores orderly cell division, effectively reducing metastasis in preclinical models. This challenges the conventional approach of increasing cell division errors to kill cancer cells, suggesting that restoring cellular order can curb tumor aggressiveness instead.
Patients with higher EZH2 levels exhibited more chromosomal alterations, confirming its key role. These findings highlight EZH2 inhibitors as a promising therapeutic strategy for TNBC and other cancers characterized by chromosomal instability, paving the way for future clinical trials targeting metastasis at its root.