Spotlight

FY12 Spending Debate Comes to a Close

Congress completed, and the President signed into law, the FY12 appropriations bill. The $915 billion spending bill wraps up the remaining nine appropriations measures. The bill provides funding for programs at the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National
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Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-NJ) Editorial in Most Recent Science

Science 16 September 2011:
Vol. 333 no. 6049 p. 1549
DOI: 10.1126/science.1211494
EDITORIAL:

Dueling Visions for Science

Rush Holt
Rush Holt is the U.S. Representative for New Jersey's 12th Congressional District and has a doctoral degree in physics.

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Hormones and Breast Cancer: Cause, Prevention, Therapy - 4/25/07

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Dr. V. Craig Jordan
Fox Chase Cancer Center

Dr. Jordan is a leader in studying the effects of estrogen-blocking drugs on breast cancer. While trying to understand why some patients' breast cancer resisted tamoxifen treatment, Dr. Jordan and his team uncovered information that led to the use of tamoxifen as a chemopreventive - a momentous advance in prevention science. Tamoxifen is currently our only weapon to reduce breast cancer in premenopausal women. Fortunately, it does not cause an increase in either endometrial cancer or blood clots, which are major concerns for postmenopausal women.

Dr. Jordan continues to study the genre of drugs called SERMS (selective estrogen receptor modulators) to further understand how they work and what effect they have on breast cancer development. Along with tamoxifen, Dr. Jordan studies raloxifene, a new medicine now shown to reduce the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Both tamoxifen and raloxifene act by occupying estrogen receptors in breast and other tissue, and therefore block estrogen's message to the cell to divide and spread. Nevertheless, further investment and research will allow us to continue to expand our menu of medicines and drug development in the future.