Why Didn My Tamoxifen Work?
Patients who have hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, take their adjuvant hormonal therapy as prescribed, and nevertheless suffer a recurrence of the disease ask me, “Why didn’t my hormonal therapy work? What went wrong?” We know that drugs like tamoxifen can prevent breast cancer 47 percent of the time, but we don’t know why it doesn’t work all of the time. Researchers have made major strides recently toward possible answers to that question. A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in June 2006 may help answer this worrisome question. A new estrogen receptor called hER has been identified that could become an important therapeutic breakthrough and may also play a role in other estrogen targets, including tissues of the uterus and, in men, the prostate. These new findings may improve our understanding of estrogen’s effects in breast cancer and lead eventually to new and potentially more effective treatments for breast cancer. Estrogen has long been
