Tamoxifen plays an essential role as adjuvant drug in breast cancer treatment. Many people do not know about the mechanism how it functions to prevent the progression of breast cancer. I have found a lot of information about the Tamoxifen to share with all of you.

Tamoxifen is Effective to Treat Breast Cancer

As what we know, Tamoxifen works to occupy the estrogen receptor and blocks the estrogen. In fact, there is another mode of action to treat the breast cancer instead of just blocking the estrogen. It also works in estrogen-receptor negative breast cancer and progesterone-receptor positive breast cancer. Instead of just blocking the estrogen, it also blocks another type of signal known as Protein Kinase C (PKC). PKC is essential in regulation of activation of oncogenes. By blocking the PKC, the oncogenes will not be activated. Besides, PKC also regulates other signals that control the growth and transformation of cells.

Furthermore, Tamoxifen is able to interfere with the cell cycle too. This is another anti-cancer action of it. As we all know, cell cycle is a predetermined program that leading the cell goes through the division. Normally, the cell cycle will be stopped at the checkpoints to ensure everything is in normal condition. The checks will ensure that the abnormal cells do not replicate. However, the cancer cells have abnormal cell cycles where they lost those checkpoints. Therefore, the cancer cells can replicate without any barrier. Consequently, the traditional chemotherapy is to restore the checkpoint function in cancer cell to stop the cell cycle. Significantly, Tamoxifen is one of the good drugs to be used as chemotherapeutic agent as it can stop the cell cycle in cancer cells.

In the previous post about the hormonal therapy for breast cancer treatment, I have mentioned that Tamoxifen can only work at 2 years. After 2 years, the drug will start to enhance the developing of tamoxifen-dependent cancer. We called this problem as Tamoxifen Resistance. Many cancer researches show that Tamoxifen Resistance is because of the permanent damage caused by the drug. It might damage the tumour suppressor gene, p53. p53 is a main role to stop the cell cycle and prevent the cancer cells to replicate. According to cancer research, p53 regulates the cell cycle when there are abnormal cells and cause them to apoptosis. Tamoxifen may stop p53 from working.

In conclusion, Tamoxifen is an effective drug to regulate the development of breast cancer only with the appropriate used. We need to get the advices from the oncologist before consuming it.