new insight into tamoxifen resistance:

KittyKitty

http://www.sciencecodex.com/microrna_controls_malignancy_and_resistance_of_breast_cancer_cells-90997

KittyKitty

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/haog-mcm050412.php

KittyKitty

the link will not post.,

 It was a good piece of news I thought, from Germany today, too bad I can't get the link to work.

Anonymous

KittyKitty, both your links work fine for me, thanks !

jenrio

KittyKitty, this is pretty cool.   If tamoxifen resistance can be figured out and reversed, that'll be wonderful!

This is the paper abstract:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Wiemann%20tamoxifen%20microRNA 

Looking forward to the paper.

Another related paper:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3218959/?tool=pubmed

Jen

Moderators

*Made all your links hot

--The Mods

KittyKitty

Thanks, Mods, I have no idea what I did wrong.

 Kitty

KittyKitty

As I read this article yesterday I was thinking about a similar topic posted recently, in another thread, about "tamoxifen withdrawal therapy." That piece of research also found that after a while the BC finds a way to actually use the hormonal therapy for its benefit.

Now this information seems to she light on the process by which the tamoxifen becomes useful to cancer. I am thinking that this piece of information might be a very important finding, in explaining the behavior of bc.

jenrio

KittyKitty,

You can make hotlinks by:

1. highlighting a section of your text.

2.  then one of the icons that's normally greyed out, a "chain link" icon" will light up.  Then you can paste the URL into the top field.   

Tamoxifen is one of the most effective drugs for hormone positive women.     Lots of drug resistance mechanisms are not clear yet, and needs a lot of work to figure out and reverse.  So these researchers really deserve a raise.

Jen

1Athena1

One day I wonder if malignancies will be reclassified - or if the field of infectious disease will grow. While reading the article I was reminded of antibiotics. They are wonderful and life saving, but apply too much, too many or for too long, and some people will become resistant and develop even deadlier forms of an infection. The difference, of course, is that TAM is not a live animal and cannot adapt to environments so it makes sense to have a hope of reversing eventual resistance to the drug by influencing the micro RNA proteins, as discussed in the article.

People can switch from hormone positive to negative and back - it happens, and yet not much is said about why. In the "old days" in experimental, advanced-stage settings, they used to treat er-pos. cancer by giving a person massive doses of estrogen. The result initially would be cancer remission, but then it would explode back. As with the overuse of antibiotics, sometimes too much treatment may cause the cancer to become more aggressive and resistant - not less.

I wish I could find where I read about estrogen. I do remember a conversation with an endocrinologist about it, though. I always feel optimistic when researchers discuss this, because it gives me more hope for a cure. Molecular biology --gene mutation sequencing and identification-- is uncovering some important secrets, IMHO. The book "Emperor of All Maladies" explains this very well, again, IMHO.