Both have many friends and acquaintances who had or still have the disease. At the other end of the chain, are researchers like Steven Hill , professor of anatomy and chair of the Breast Cancer Task Force , who focuses on the molecular and cellular events that foster or inhibit the tumors of the breast. Though his busy lab seems worlds away from the offices of McNeill and Martin, their paths inevitably cross in the mission of the Tulane Cancer Center. While Hill and other members of the task force tease out the many factors that make breast cancer still so difficult to treat, individuals like McNeill and Martin are doing all they can to keep the support flowing and keep the public aware of the progress and of the distance yet to go. Hill studies how hormones, especially estrogen, influence breast cancer cells, and on the factors that, in turn, affect estrogen production.
Estrogen works by binding to and activating an estrogen receptor protein.
If the tumor has the estrogen receptor, for example, treatments such as the estrogen-like tamoxifen should not be used, because it will accelerate tumor growth. Hill has found variants that precede the estrogen receptor and that some cells do not make estrogen receptors at all. In receptor-positive cells and breast cancer cells, there is a binding factor that multiplies the level of estrogen receptor many fold, and tumors seem to grow more quickly. The estrogen receptor itself, however, is affected by melatonin, another hormone that Hill is studying. Hill has shown that, in culture, melatonin combined with retinoic acid in a specific, timed sequence can kill one type of breast cancer cell.