New Hormone Therapy Could Slow Half of all Breast Cancers

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Researchers are currently exploring the potential treatment where adding a low-cost hormone therapy to breast cancer treatment regimen could slow tumor growth in about half of women, according to a new study, released in Nature from the University of Cambridge.

After treating cancer with progesterone in combination with the hormonal drug Tamoxifen. Found that tumors were half the size of those treated with just tamoxifen alone. Strong case for a clinical trial to investigate the potential benefit of adding progesterone to drugs that target the estrogen receptor.

Could improve treatment for the majority of hormone-driven breast cancer. Previous research has already shown:

  1. Blocking the hormone estrogen from attaching to certain types of tumor cells that express estrogen receptors, possible to slow the cancer's growth
  2. Tamoxifen works by putting stopping cell division within the tumor

New research shows: 

  • Women who had tumors that express not only estrogen receptors, but also progesterone receptors – known as “double positive” cancers – have a far better chance of survival
  • Because when progesterone binds to the tumor cell, it also alters the receptor for estrogen
  • Changes its activity and puts a second brake on cell growth

Researchers compared DNA maps in breast cancer cells grown with and without progesterone which revealed that “'switched on' progesterone receptor redirects the estrogen receptor to different DNA regions – switching on a different set of genes that slow down cell growth.”

~ 1.7 million women diagnosed with breast cancer each year. This could be a groundbreaking new treatment through just simply adding cheap and easily available progesterone to Tamoxifen. It could benefit up to half of them of women with breast cancer. Next step is to conduct clinical trial.

Hope is that in the future, technique could be used to provide personalized treatment for women. Through testing out different therapies on the cells in the lab before giving them to the patient.