The Influence of Phorbol Ester on the Effect of Tamoxifen in Breast Cancer Cells

The growth of breastcells is stimulated simulta-neously by peptide growth factors and steroids,andithas been recently found thatthere are crosstalks inseveral levels between the two pathways. To eluci-date if the activation of extracelluar signal transduc-tion pathway influences the response of estrogen re-ceptor(ER) positivebreastcancer cellsto tamoxifen,we examined the influence of TPA,an activator ofprotein kinase C and mitogen activated protein ki-nase,on the effectof tamoxifen.1　 MATE…

The influence of phorbol ester on the effect of tamoxifen in breast cancer cells

To investigate the correlation between the activity of kinases in the growth factor signal transduction pathway and the development of resistance of breast cancer to tamoxifen, reporter gene regulated by the regulating fragment of CCD1 was transfected into the MCF 7 cells, and the influence of tamoxifen on the reporter gene expression was examined under different conditions of TPA treatment. Our results showed that the reporter gene expression was inhibited by tamoxifen and promoted by TPA. Furthermore, tamoxifen exerts an agonist effect on the reporter gene expression when the cells was treated by TPA previously for 12 h. It is concluded that TPA could induce estrogen like effect of tamoxifen on estrogen receptor positive breast cancer cells and it may be one of the mechanisms responsible for the development of tamoxifen resistance.