PET Imaging Reveals Which Breast Cancer Patients Won’t Respond to Hormone Therapy

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Hormone therapy is only effective in roughly half of estrogen receptor-positive cancers. Being able to identify patients that will not respond could save valuable treatment time.

The answer to whether hormone replacement therapy will work for a woman with breast cancer likely comes down to whether her estrogen receptors are working – a function that can be clearly seen via PET imaging.

Roughly 80 percent of the approximately 250,000 cases of breast cancer diagnosed annually in the United States are labeled as estrogen receptor-positive. Hormone therapy is commonly used to treat this group because it can impede estrogen’s effect on tumors. But, it only works in about half of cases, leaving providers wondering how to identify which women will benefit and who will not.

To help doctors figure out which patients are good hormone therapy candidates, a team of investigators from the Washington University School of Medicine at St. Louis launched a trial, and they discovered the treatment does not work in women with non-functional estrogen receptors.

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