Targeting drug-resistant breast cancer with estrogen

Researchers at Dartmouth's and Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center (NCCC) hope to make estrogen therapy a more accessible treatment option for breast cancer patients who could benefit from it. Anti-estrogen treatments, which block growth signals from estrogen receptors (ER) in tumors, are effective treatments for ER+ breast cancer. But it is common for breast tumors to become resistant to anti-estrogen treatments over time. The research team, led by molecular biologist Todd Miller, Ph.D., and Nicole Traphagen, a Ph.D. candidate in the Miller Laboratory, found that in mice, cycling between estrogen treatment and anti-estrogen treatment at a specific point in time can dramatically increase the duration of tumor regression.