A recent study out of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has found that triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) can be treated using vitamin D and androgen receptor-targeted therapy.
TNBC has generally been unresponsive to hormone receptor-targeted treatments. This significant discovery now offers patients suffering from this aggressive disease a treatment option beyond chemotherapy.
According to Tan A. Ince, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study, triple-negative tumors have been unresponsive to receptor-targeted treatments and it was only when they discovered that two-thirds of triple-negative breast cancers express vitamin D and androgen receptors that they were able to treat the tumors using a hormone-receptor approach.”
Breast cancers can be categorized into two subtypes: those which are hormone-receptor positive, and those which are hormone-receptor negative. For hormone-receptor positive cells, hormone-receptor therapy is used to interrupt the role of hormones in the cells’ growth. However, this type of therapy is not an option for hormone-receptor negative cancers like TNBC.
Ince and his team found that although TNBC lacks the three receptors that fuel most breast cancers—progesterone receptors, estrogen receptors, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2—it does express androgen receptors (AR) and vitamin D receptors (VDR). Throughout the study, researchers discovered that by co-targeting AP and VDR with agonist hormones, they could weaken TNBC cells.
