Methods of Treatment:
Hormone Therapy Our Best Friend to the Rescue
"Now go fetch me a cure..."
Surprisingly, there are only two animal species that are known to develop cancerous tumors of
the prostate gland—dogs and humans. It was this rare biological connection between humans and
their "best friends" that made the story of the development of the first hormone-based treatment
of cancer possible. Hormones are chemical substances that help to control the processes taking
place within plants and animals. Endocrinology, the study of hormones, their production, and
their effects, was a relatively new field when it came to human endocrinology in the 1930s. This
was the decade in which Dr. Charles Benton Huggins—a professor of surgery at the University of
Chicago—began to study the connections between hormones and cancer. It just so happened that he
began to study these connections through observations of and experiments upon dogs.
Charles B. Huggins
Huggins was interested in an outstanding puzzle in the scientific understanding of cancer. The
behavior of normal cells is regulated through a number of processes in the human body. One type
of these regulating processes is governed chemically, through the action of hormones. For
example, just consider all the changes in the body caused by hormones during puberty. The
outstanding puzzle was this: did cancer cells still respond to these regulation processes, or
were they beyond their control entirely? Huggins decided to look for a general answer through
the study of the prostate gland. Because he would have to use fairly drastic experiments to
answer his questions, he turned first to looking at dogs.
Initially, Huggins had to determine what was going on in healthy dogs. He needed to know how
normal cells responded to hormones. Looking at his dogs, Huggins found that the cells of the
prostate gland grew and increased their activities in the presence of male sex hormones,
produced by the testicles. Now, he formed a hypothesis. If the normal cells increased growth and
activity when they interacted with male sex hormones, perhaps cancerous cells would respond in
the same way. Continuing this reasoning, Huggins conjectured that one could slow down the growth
of cancerous cells, and even eliminate them, through removing or countering these male sex
hormones. Castration would remove any further production of the male hormones. The introduction
of female sex hormones would, presumably, produce effects counter to those produced by the male
hormones.
Prostate cancer awareness
postage stamp.
Eventually, Huggins offered human patients an experimental treatment for their prostate cancer
through injections of female sex hormones. These chemical substances were already known to be
safe and produced by natural processes in the body. While this treatment was experimental, the
patients involved had very severe cancers that were beyond the reach of surgical and other
existing chemical treatments. The results of the experimental therapy were extraordinary. The
hormones reduced tumor sizes and prevented the cancer from spreading. A new realm of cancer
treatment through the chemistry of hormones was opened. At the same time, Huggins's work
demonstrated a new and important piece of scientific knowledge. It showed that male and female
sex hormones acted as antagonists to each other, the one counteracting the other.
Breast cancer awareness
postage stamp.
In the 1950s Huggins turned his attention to hormonal therapies for breast cancer.
Unfortunately, breast cancers did not respond to treatments by other counteracting hormones.
What he did find was that there was some therapeutic benefit to removing the source of the
female sex hormones—the ovaries and the adrenal glands. While both of Huggins' cancer therapies
had serious drawbacks, they were life-saving for many seriously ill patients, and they
constituted a major breakthrough in the treatment of cancer. In 1966, Huggins won the Nobel
Prize for Medicine for this work.
Interestingly, at about the same time Huggins was receiving his Nobel Prize, scientists at his
University of Chicago were investigating the next generation of hormonal cancer therapy.
Tamoxifen was just over the horizon.
