Receptors, growth factors and steroid insensitivity of tumours

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Abstract
Tumours that arise in hormone-sensitive cells such as breast frequently retain some of the regulatory controls of their normal progenitors, but even these controls may be lost or altered during progression from the hormone-sensitive to hormone-insensitive state (King & Darbre, 1989). This article will discuss developments in two areas, steroid receptors and growth factors that are relevant to the latter phenomenon. The discovery that specific intracellular receptors were required for most steroid effects was followed by the observation that oestrogen receptor (ER)-negative breast tumours were unresponsive to hormones (Jensen, Polley, Smith et al. 1975). The general interpretation of this finding was that receptor loss accompanied response loss, and that the former event might be causally related to the latter. This idea received powerful support from a seminal series of experiments in which glucocorticoid-sensitive lymphoma cells were converted to the insensitive state by experimental mutagenesis; over 90% of the insensitive clones

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