The Journal of Clinical Oncology has featured a review on the influence of sex hormones on the progression of breast, prostate, gynaecological, and colorectal cancer.

The review focuses principally on the influence of oestrogens and androgens. The following topics are discussed:

• Endogenous steroids: Synthesis, disposition, and mode of action

• Therapeutic interventions

• Breast cancer progression: Endogenous steroids

• Breast cancer progression: Hormone therapy

• Breast cancer prognosis and mechanisms or resistance

• Prostate cancer progression: Hormone therapy

The authors summarise that: “Evidence for an involvement of sex steroids in disease progression is overwhelming in breast and prostate cancers, and this persists in many cases after relapse, when initial anti-hormonal therapies have failed. Quantitative relationships of circulating hormones with clinical outcome are mostly not apparent probably because of the wide variability in the degree of hormone dependence of individual tumours and possibly due to their ability to synthesise stimulatory steroids themselves. Eventual total independence from such stimuli appears to occur in advanced disease but even here new strategies that target the interaction between resistance mechanisms and ER may be most effective when administered in addition to rather than instead of anti-hormonal therapy. Increasing moves toward personalisation of treatment may enable the identification of patients with non-classically hormone-sensitive tumours that could benefit from targeting the hormonal stimuli.”