Study on intracellular energy regulation during endocrine therapy for breast cancer

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Endocrine therapy is a main therapeutic option for hormone receptor(HR)-positive breast cancer. De novo and acquired resistance to endocrine therapy is a hazard for efficient treatment of breast cancer, thus prediction and monitoring of therapeutic effect is critical. While suppression of proliferation by endocrine treatment has been well studied, cell death mode by endocrine therapy remains to be elucidated. The correlation between cell death mode and therapeutic effect was examined by using tissue specimens from the clinical trial with preoperative aromatase inhibitor treatment. Apoptosis markers did not show any change during treatment while autophagy markers increased by the treatment in both cancer cells and stromal cells. Increases in autophagy in cancer cells were associated with clinical effects of endocrine therapy, suggesting the involvement of autophagy in treatment effect by endocrine therapy, which may indicate that assessment of autophagic status might lead to detailed evaluation of therapeutic effects of endocrine treatment.