文档介绍：Available online http://breast-cancer-/content/11/3/206
Review
Estrogen regulation of apoptosis: how can one hormone
stimulate and inhibit?
Joan S Lewis-Wambi and V Craig Jordan
Fox Chase Cancer Center, 333 Cottman Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19111, USA
Corresponding author: Joan S Lewis-Wambi, joan.******@.edu
Published: 29 May 2009 Breast Cancer Research 2009, 11:206 (doi:)
This article is online at http://breast-cancer-/content/11/3/206
© 2009 BioMed Central Ltd
Abstract patient with advanced breast cancer. Beatson had based his
The link between estrogen and the development and proliferation approach on the role of the ovaries in mammalian lactation
of breast cancer is well documented. Estrogen stimulates growth and presumed that there would be a similar mechanism for
and inhibits apoptosis through estrogen receptor-mediated breast cancer growth. Since that time, there has been an
mechanisms in many cell types. Interestingly, there is strong expanding clinical database that implicates estrogen in the
evidence that estrogen induces apoptosis in breast cancer and development and progression of breast cancer. Evidence to
other cell types. Forty years ago, before the development of
support this es from clinical studies of
tamoxifen, high-dose estrogen was used to induce tumor
regression of hormone-dependent breast cancer in post-meno- hormone replacement therapy, which were initially designed
pausal women. While the mechanisms by which estrogen induces to determine the benefits of replacement approaches on
apoptosis were pletely known, recent evidence from our post-menopausal women’s health [3,4], and the essful
laboratory and others demonstrates the involvement of the extrinsic clinical strategy of treating breast cancer by blocking
(Fas/FasL) and the intrinsic (mitochondria) pathways in this estrogen action using the anti-estrogen tamoxifen [5] or
process. We discuss the different apoptotic signaling pathways
preventing estroge