Kern F G, Cheville A L, Liu Y L
Vincent T. Lombardi Cancer Research Center, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20007.
Semin Cancer Biol. 1990 Oct;1(5):317-28.
Interference with autocrine or paracrine loops offers a potential means of treatment of tumors which currently lack effective therapies. Hormonally responsive breast cancers generally respond to treatment with antiestrogens but a frequent occurrence is an outgrowth of populations of tumor cells that are no longer dependent on estrogen for growth. If the acquisition of the ability to constitutively express growth factors or growth factor receptors is associated with this form of tumor progression, identification of the growth factors and their receptors having the capability of reducing the dependence on estrogen for growth is an important first step in the design of strategies aimed at interfering with their function. Experimental systems employing transfection with eukaryotic expression vectors are described that are designed to test the hypothesis that overexpression of epidermal growth factor receptor or the related protein C-ERB-B2 may confer an increased growth rate under conditions of estrogen deprivation. The transfected cells are also being used to explore the molecular mechanisms underlying the regulation of epidermal growth factor receptor expression by estrogen.
干扰自分泌或旁分泌环路为目前缺乏有效治疗方法的肿瘤提供了一种潜在的治疗手段。激素反应性乳腺癌通常对抗雌激素治疗有反应，但常见的情况是出现不再依赖雌激素生长的肿瘤细胞群体的生长。如果组成性表达生长因子或生长因子受体的能力的获得与这种肿瘤进展形式相关，那么鉴定具有降低对雌激素生长依赖性能力的生长因子及其受体是设计旨在干扰其功能的策略的重要第一步。描述了采用真核表达载体转染的实验系统，其设计用于检验以下假设：在雌激素剥夺条件下，表皮生长因子受体或相关蛋白C-ERB-B2的过表达可能导致生长速率增加。转染细胞也被用于探索雌激素调节表皮生长因子受体表达的分子机制。
