A four-year, $650,000 Research Scholar Grant from the American Cancer Society (ACS) will help Cornell University biologists, led by W. Lee Kraus, assistant professor of molecular biology and genetics, learn more about how the hormone estrogen binds to growing cells in the human body-including cells that produce breast cancer tumors.

Kraus credits a graduate student in his Cornell laboratory, Mi Young Kim, with the discovery of two enzymes that apparently act on estrogen receptors, which are located inside cells. The Cornell researchers now hope to learn how estrogen receptor enzymes, called acetylase and deacetylase, alternately add or remove other cell-signaling chemicals, called acetyl groups, and indirectly permit or prevent estrogen from reaching its receptors.

Certain drugs, such as Tamoxifen, are routinely prescribed to prevent the occurrence or re-occurrence of estrogen-related cancers because the drugs somehow block estrogen action at the cell receptors. But the molecular-level details, in the complex chain of chemical signals between hormones and cell receptors, are not clear to medical science, and Krause hopes his ACS-sponsored studies will help explain the signaling pathways.

"Ultimately, we would like to use this information to find better ways to target estrogen receptors for more effective diagnostic, preventative and therapeutic options for breast cancer patients," he says.

SOURCE:
Cornell University (http://www.cornell.edu)