Progesterone, when taken with the affordable yet potent cancer drug tamoxifen, was found effective in helping half of women suffering from breast cancer to have longer lives, a research by a group of scientists revealed.
A published in Nature, suggests that those with early stage cancer could benefit from this drug which is due for clinical trial. Also, the research found that the hormone progesterone may be helpful in reversing the growth of certain tumors.
Nearly 1.7 million women globally are diagnosed with breast cancer each year and about half could stand to benefit from progesterone therapy if the findings are confirmed in clinical trials.
The significant findings of the U.K. and Australian researchers could give a glimmer of hope to thousands of women with cancer.
"The results are pretty clear and potentially have direct benefits for many women with breast cancer," Jason Carroll, who was one of the researchers at the Cancer Research U.K. Cambridge Research Institute, said.
Hormones have a significant factor, particularly in the development of breast cancer because they are responsible in cancer cell division when they get attached with "hormone receptors" on the edge of the cancer.
Carroll's group worked with Wayne Tilley at the University of Adelaide and did a series of experiments on human breast cancer cells and on mice implanted with human breast tumors. Results revealed that progesterone receptor and estrogen receptor are closely related. Progesterone receptor was also found powerful in causing estrogen to be less aggressive.
The researchers also observed that cancer cells have shrunk in size by almost half after getting treated by a combination of progesterone and tamoxifen compared to when given tamoxifen alone.
"It could be very significant. In early breast cancer you could increase the number of people being cured and in advanced breast cancer, where we're not curing, we could control the disease for longer," Prof. Carlos Caldas from the University of Cambridge, said.
Cancer researchers hailed the positive result of the initial trial. According to Dr Emma Smith, from Cancer Research U.K., the initial results were very "exciting," given that when proven effective, this could be "an easy, cheap and simple way to improve the survival of thousands of women, but it needs clinical trials."
