Endocrine Abstracts

The observed association between thyroid disorders and breast cancer has provoked many investigations. One area where there is some, although far from universal, agreement is the finding of an increased prevalence of anti-thyroid autoantibodies in breast cancer patients compared to controls. Whether this is a feature of a generalised autoimmune response to breast cancer, or provoked by the enzyme thyroid peroxidase acting as an autoantigen, remains unclear. In this study we lo...

Introduction: Regulation of HER2 through the transcription factor PEA3 is associated with tumour progression and resistance to endocrine treatment in human breast cancer. The mechanism of this resistance remains unclear. Activation of estrogen receptor co-activator proteins via the MAP-kinase pathway is thought to be central to tamoxifen insensitivity. We hypothesised that activation of HER2 by PEA3 may result in activation of co-activator proteins such as AIB1 (amplified-in-b...

Introduction: Faslodex (Fulvestrant) is a novel antiestrogen, which has been demonstrated to have clinical efficacy in metastatic breast cancer. It is thought to mediate it's effects by downregulating ER expression. ER-alpha and ER-beta function as transcription factors to modulate genes relevant to breast cancer progression. Both interact with nuclear regulatory proteins to enhance or inhibit transcription. We hypothesized that Faslodex may modulate the recruitment and intera...

The estrogen receptor is encoded by two genes (ER-alpha and ER-beta). Both function as transcription factors to modulate expression of target genes. ER-alpha has been shown to interact with co-regulators to enhance or inhibit transcription in vitro. We hypothesised that the existence of these co-regulators contribute to the differing clinical response of patients to treatment with the anti-estrogen four hydroxytamoxifen (4-HOT). The aim of this project was to localise ER-alpha...