Inhibition of sphingosine kinase affects ER signalling

Estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer drug resistance is becoming a large problem, with approximately 70% of breast cancer diagnoses being ER positive. Antoon and colleagues propose a strategy for targeting ER signalling. They focused their study on inhibition of sphingosine kinase, the main regulator of the conversion of pro-apoptotic ceramide to pro-survival sphingosine-1-phosphate. They looked at the effect of the inhibitor SKI-II on ER receptor signalling in vitro in human breast cancer cells, finding that it abrogates ER signalling (with the inhibitor binding ER directly) and diminishes the survival and proliferation of breast cancer cells. Antoon et al. (2011) Journal of Molecular Endocrinology 46 205–216.

Read the full article at: DOI:10.1530/JME-10-0116.