New research has shown that male sex hormones could be responsible for some cases of breast cancer. Scientists in the United States say that they have now designed drugs that will block male sex hormones or androgens, in order to help fight breast cancer. A team at the University of Colorado discovered that a lot of breast cancers have androgen receptors on the surface of them, and that male hormones such as testosterone help to fuel the growth of tumors.
Drugs that block these androgen receptors could offer a whole new way to fight the disease, improving wellness and wellbeing of cancer sufferers all over the world. Clinical trials are now planned in order to test this theory.
The team has found that as much as three quarters of cases of breast cancer have these androgen receptor, and therefore might benefit from this type of therapy. The research for this is still at an early stage, but it does look promising, as this type of treatment is already used to tackle prostate cancer.
It is already known that some types of breast cancers’ growth is fueled by the female sex hormones, such as oestrogen and progesterone, and Tamoxifen is a widely-used breast cancer medication, which blocks the oestrogen receptors and stops them from fueling the growth of tumors.
Scientists are now interested to see how this principle could work when blocking androgens from encouraging proteins to attach to the surface of breast cancer. If this proved to be a success, the armourery against breast cancer could be quite significant, improving the survival rates for the disease and improving the long term outcome for those who contract the disease. For example, patients who have a relapse whilst on Tamoxifen may have androgen receptors rather than female sex hormone receptors, and so would benefit from a slightly different type of treatment.