Cancer Australia funding for arming androgen receptors to transform endocrine therapy for ER+ breast cancer

Associate Professor Theresa Hickey and her team have received $600,000 from Cancer Australia to support research to examine the complex interaction between estrogen and androgen to develop new, more effective strategies for treating breast cancer, with potential to also improve quality of life.

Breast cancer is mainly a disease in which the hormone estrogen stimulates uncontrolled growth through the estrogen receptor (ER). Work from the DRMCRL and collaborators has discovered that androgen, another sex hormone, can redirect the actions of estrogen in breast cancers to halt growth or make the cancer disappear. The support from Cancer Australia will be used to determine whether androgen receptor (AR) activation prevents or delays disease progression to ER target therapy resistance and whether AR activation impacts ER+ breast cancer metastasis.