Battling breast cancer

Dr. Myles Brown and colleagues (Dana Farber Cancer Institute) lend new insight into the transcriptional network that drives breast cancer cell proliferation in response to estrogen exposure. The majority of human breast cancers express estrogen receptor alpha (ERalpha), and grow and divide in response to estrogen. The authors have discovered that ERalpha binds to a novel enhancer in the cyclin D1 gene (CCND1) to promote estrogen-responsive cell proliferation. The researchers also delineate a number of other associated transcription factors that cooperate to regulate CCND1 expression and cell proliferation in breast cancer cells. Dr. Brown is hopeful that "the basic understanding of how estrogen promotes breast cancer growth revealed by our work will lead to the development of improved therapies that impact the lives of patients with the disease."