Breast & prostate cancers have remarkable underlying biological similarities because sex hormones & their corresponding receptors work in similar ways

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Most breast and prostate cancer patients are cured by local interventions such as surgery and radiation, often in combination with adjuvant endocrine or chemical therapies. However, many patients experience disease recurrence after a number of years (or even decades) and the newly emergent cancers are typically more aggressive, more widely spread (metastatic) and often fatal. The therapeutic strategy employed to treat advanced breast and prostate cancers involves some form of hormonal deprivation to block estrogen receptor (ER) activity in breast cancer and androgen receptor (AR) activity in prostate cancer. Hormone deprivation therapies generally work by blocking the ability to make hormones (estrogen or androgen) or the ability of receptors (ER or AR) to bind hormones.

 

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The knowledge that sex hormones and their receptors drive breast and prostate cancers was a major breakthrough, and the hormone deprivation therapy treatments resulting from this knowledge have saved innumerable lives. Indeed, the hormone deprivation therapy strategy has been the mainstay of treatment for breast and prostate cancers that have spread to other vital organs (i.e. bone, liver, brain) for more than 100 years (breast) or 70 years (prostate). Although initially effective, hormone deprivation therapy is not curative, especially once disease becomes metastatic. After a variable period of response, patients eventually relapse with more lethal forms of disease. Despite new drugs that more effectively inhibit ER or AR, patients still mainly die of ER-driven (breast) or AR-driven (prostate) cancer that becomes resistant to any form of hormone deprivation therapy. Thus, new treatment strategies are required to improve survival rates from these advanced, therapy-resistant stages of disease.

 

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In summary, the current treatment paradigm of hormone deprivation therapy has prolonged life for many women and men with breast or prostate cancer, but….

• Treatment resistance
  Most women and men who die of breast or prostate cancer have ER+ or AR+ therapy-resistant disease, often associated with altered ER and AR signalling, and development of aggressive disease.
• Treatment side effects
  Sex hormone deprivation can make patients feel miserable from joint pain, loss of libido, impairment of cognitive function, early menopause in women and erectile dysfunction in men. Many stop taking the drugs due to these side effects.

A major focus of our research is to develop a new approach to outsmart these cancers that involves the selective reprogramming of sex hormone receptor activity in breast and prostate cancers rather than wholesale elimination of sex hormone activity within all body tissues

https://health.adelaide.edu.au/dame...n-and-treatment-of-breast-and-prostate-cancer