Uterine Cancer And Tamoxifen

The link between uterine cancer and tamoxifen. Breast cancer patients are often prescribed the hormone tamoxifen. It has been known for a long time that this drug greatly reduces the risk of recurrence of the disease, but it increases the risk of uterine cancer. Dr. Marjolein Dry discovered that the tumors that occur in the uterine mucosa after the use of tamoxifen look different at the molecular level. In future, the risk of the development of these tumors by tamoxifen may hopefully be eliminated.

About 75 percent of breast cancer patients have hormone-sensitive breast cancer. The tumor then grows under the influence of estrogen. This is a type of hormone that women have more than men and that is why it is called a female hormone.

Medicine

Often, a patient with hormone-sensitive breast cancer is prescribed tamoxifen. This medicine inhibits the growth of breast cancer cells that may have subsided after surgery. This reduces the chance of sowing. Like estrogen, tamoxifen binds to the so-called estrogen receptor of breast cancer cells, Droog explains. "When estrogen binds to this receptor, the tumor is growing. But when tamoxifen binds to it, it does not happen. Tamoxifen disrupts estrogen from the receptor, thereby inhibiting the growth of breast cancer. "



Predict

Estrogen receptors occur not only in the breast tissue but also in other areas of the body, such as in the bones, the brain, and the uterine mucosa. Tamoxifen has beneficial side effects in some places, thus protecting the bones against bone loss. But a disadvantage of tamoxifen is that it increases the risk of cancer of the uterine mucosa (endometrial cancer). "That chance only grows when a woman uses tamoxifen for two years or more," says Dry.

Because of this risk, it would be nice to predict which patients are more likely to have this type of uterine cancer. "For this reason, too little is known about how tamoxifen may lead to uterine mucosal cancer. And we also do not understand how tamoxifen increases the risk of endometrial cancer while protecting against hormone-sensitive breast cancer. "

Differences

Dry said at a molecular level found differences in uterine gland tumors of women who received tamoxifen, and women who never used this medicine. "Hopefully, with more of this kind of knowledge in the future, it will be possible to predict which patient has a greater chance of uterine cancer."

Targeting

Dry hopes that it will also be possible in the future to affect the activity of the estrogen receptor tissue-specific. Then its action in the cells in the breast can be inhibited without increasing the risk of uterine cancer.

*Image source : Wikimedia Commons

References :

1. National Cancer Institute
2. Mayo Clinic
3. American Cancer Society