NRs have fundamental roles in promoting and maintaining human health, and disruption of NR pathways is implicated in diseases including diabetes, obesity, inflammation and cancer. NR pathways are currently targetted therapeutically in these diseases, and this highlights the fact that NR-based therapeutics are tolerated and effective in human physiology.
NRs, including orphan receptors, NR partner proteins including co-regulators, and critical regulators including microRNAs (miRNAs) are important contributors to breast tumour growth, and to development of resistance to endocrine therapy. While these highly related transcription regulators interact at a number of levels and are likely to form functional networks in target cells, their combined expression and interaction in breast cancer is almost completely unstudied.
Use of biomarkers in selecting patient populations for treatment has made a major impact in disease management to date, highlighting the scope for identification of additional targets to improve outlook for currently intractable disease. NRs and their ligands have largely been overlooked in clinical breast cancer to date, and the NRBC project aims to identify NR signalling networks active in breast cancers and establish new predictive and therapeutic targets in women.
