Hijacking estrogen receptors

Although they've long been viewed as passive indicators of breast tumors' sensitivity to estrogen receptor blockers, a new study suggests that progesterone receptors may have an active role to play in combating breast cancer by binding ERs and preventing them from turning on oncogenes.

Jason Carroll, a senior group leader at Cancer Research UK's Cambridge Research Institute and co-leader on the study, told BioCentury, "It turns out that progesterone receptors act as molecular sinks that sequester estrogen receptors from one set of sites in the genome to another. The consequence is that estrogen receptors no longer switch on genes that cause cancer cells to grow." ...