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Department of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556
3 To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jwelsh3{at}nd.edu.
The vitamin D-3 receptor (VDR) is a nuclear receptor that modulates gene expression when complexed with its ligand 1-
,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol [1,25(OH)2-D3], which is the biologically active form of vitamin D-3. The cellular effects of VDR signaling include growth arrest, differentiation and/or induction of apoptosis, which indicate that the vitamin D pathway participates in negative-growth regulation. Although much attention has been directed in recent years toward the development of synthetic vitamin D analogs as therapeutic agents for a variety of human cancers including those derived from the mammary gland, studies on vitamin D as a chemopreventive agent for breast cancer have been quite limited. The VDR is expressed in normal mammary gland, where it functions to oppose estrogen-driven proliferation and maintain differentiation; this suggests that 1,25(OH)2-D3 participates in negative-growth regulation of mammary epithelial cells. Furthermore, preclinical studies show that vitamin D compounds can reduce breast cancer development in animals, and human data indicate that both vitamin D status and genetic variations in the VDR may affect breast cancer risk. Collectively, findings from cellular, molecular and population studies suggest that the VDR is a nutritionally modulated growth-regulatory gene that may represent a molecular target for chemoprevention of breast cancer.
KEY WORDS: vitamin D mammary gland breast cancer VDR knockout mice
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