Sylvester researchers identify treatment for aggressive Breast Cancer

A recent study by researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine revealed that triple-negative breast cancer(TNBC), which has generally been unresponsive to hormone receptor-targeted treatments, can indeed be treated using vitamin D and androgen receptor-targeted therapy. The discovery offers a new treatment option beyond chemotherapy for this aggressive type of breast cancer. They discovered that two-thirds of triple-negative breast cancers express vitamin D and androgen receptors, that then were able to treat the tumors using a hormone-receptor approach.
TNBC lacks the three receptors that fuel most breast cancers - estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, it does express androgen receptors (AR) and vitamin D receptors (VDR). This provided the basis for the study. The researchers showed that co-targeting AP and VDR with agonist hormones turned out to be an effective strategy to reduce the sustainability of the cancer cells. This could lead to the use of targeted receptor therapy in the treatment of TNBC and, in turn, to better patient outcomes.