Receptors and Their Modulation

The potential for hormonal intervention in cancer was identified as early as 1895, even before the concept of hormones was established. Indeed, we know that the first hormone was discovered only in 1902 (secretin, by Bayliss and Starling). The Scottish surgeon Beatson performed a bilateral ovarectomy in a young woman with an enormous cancer of the breast. The tumor regressed spectacularly. Subsequently, other hormonal actions on cancer were made possible (prostate, endometrial, thyroid), and it was extablished that this action was modulated by the presence of hormonal receptors in the cancerous tissue [1] (Figs. 1,2).