Word: androgens
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...Prostate cancer, which kills 29,000 men in the U.S. each year, is a tenacious disease in advanced stages. The treatment of cancer that has metastasized beyond the prostate involves drugs that block male hormones, the androgens testosterone and dihydrotestosterone, which feed tumor growth. Antiandrogen drugs, like bicalutamide, work by binding to the androgen receptors on prostate-cancer cells, chemically preventing the hormones from interacting with the tumor. Over time, however, cancer cells become resistant to the drugs as the number of androgen receptors on the cells increases, and in a cruel twist, the drugs somehow begin to stimulate...
...Some researchers think the solution is to avoid involving androgen receptors altogether. But Charles Sawyers, a cancer researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), isn't convinced - and he has an alternative. In the new Science paper, co-authored by Sawyers and other researchers at HHMI, the University of California, Los Angeles, and a host of other institutions, data suggest that a new chemical compound may sidestep the problem of resistance. When used to treat mouse tumors that were derived from drug-resistant prostate-cancer cells, the compound led to dramatic shrinkage, which has researchers hoping for a similar...
Preliminary findings of the study presented at the Prostate Cancer Symposium in Orlando, Fla., last month concluded that men suffering from prostate cancer undergoing the treatment, known as androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), are nearly 3 percent more likely to die of heart failure compared with those who do not receive the treatment...
...decision so complex is that even when the chromosomes present a clear message on gender, anatomy may contradict it. Consider Sherri, a 45-year-old tax attorney from San Diego. Although her sex chromosomes are unambiguously XY, there is no doubt that she is a woman. Sherri has androgen-insensitivity syndrome (AIS), a condition that affects prenatal development. All embryos start out with the rudiments of male and female reproductive systems. A sort of developmental tug-of-war ensues until, generally speaking, the male reproductive system predominates in XY fetuses and the female in XX fetuses. The external male genitalia...
...preliminary. The study was small, and most of the average improvement in the hormone group was due to far-above-average improvement in just three men. But Pope's work suggests a genetic component to the hormonal connection. Testosterone's effectiveness is in part determined by the sensitivity of androgen receptors on the surface of cells--a variable that is itself determined by the genes. Other researchers, notably Dr. Stuart Seidman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, are skeptical, insisting that there is nowhere near enough data to support the idea that testosterone has anything to do with depression...