"An animal study suggests that resistance to tamoxifen therapy in some estrogen receptor positive breast cancers may originate from in utero exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals. The study provides a new path forward in human research as about half of the breast cancers treated with this common cancer therapy do not respond well, say researchers at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, who led the multi-institutional research.
The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI), identified four genes that are linked to tamoxifen resistance and poor prognosis of breast cancer, by comparing results obtained in a new animal model, in human breast cancer cells grown in culture, and in publically available datasets collected from thousands of estrogen receptor positive breast cancer patients treated with tamoxifen.
"Higher estrogen levels in utero have been known to increase risk of estrogen positive breast cancer in laboratory animals -- and humans -- but it wasn't known until this study that these elevated levels may also be responsible for tamoxifen resistance," says the study's co-lead author, Leena Hilakivi-Clarke, PhD, a professor of oncology at Georgetown Lombardi..."
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